It’s happened; you’ve taken all the advice online about updating your content regularly and have written an amazing blog post—the kind of blog that will really get your audience engaged and wanting to use your service. You’ve clicked publish, and it’s on your website; now what? Do you sit back and wait for people to find it? The answer is no.
If you consider why you publish blogs, it’s because you want to let as many people know about your business as possible. While putting words on a page can be fun, there is ultimately a reason for doing it, and that is to get reach. So, you have to think of anything you publish on your website in the same way that you would a personal good news story; you need to shout about it from the rooftops.
Here are a few ways to get more reach, website hits and hopefully, new customers.
Use your mailing list
If you have a GDPR friendly mailing list of all your clients and customers, then email them about your latest blog, including a link. Aside from increasing your post’s reach, it also provides the opportunity to check in with your client base.
Post more than one link on social media.
Posting a link to your latest blog on all your social media platforms is a great idea, but an even better idea is to post it multiple times, on different days, with differing key messages. There are two reasons for this, firstly everyone isn’t on social media at the same time you are, so when you post, your work could end up further down a feed than someone is prepared to scroll.
The second reason is that by changing the wording of your social media posts, you can spark the interest of different customer demographics. For example, we could post this blog many times with a focus on how to improve blog reach, use your mailing list to improve your SEO or make your blogs more accessible. You could also turn your blog into an ad, increasing its reach and pushing it to a wider audience.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that for blogs considered ‘evergreen content’, you can share them long after they have been written. Evergreen content has some longevity to it and is less likely to go out of date, such as advice blogs like this blog.
Interlink your blog posts
There are three reasons why it’s a great idea to interlink your blog posts (that means adding links to other blogs throughout your writing). The first is that search engines love a blog with links in it and will rank it higher than others that don’t. The second is that you want to encourage your visitors to take a look around your website instead of bouncing off after reading. You want them to go for a browse, and links can help them do that.
The final reason is that interlinking your blogs means that you have to revisit blogs that you have already written; this provides you with an opportunity to refresh them (which we will come to in a minute).
Answer questions in LinkedIn groups or on Quora
This can be a tricky balance but can also be really useful for showing your professional knowledge and skills to a wider audience. The trick is to answer a question and include a link to your blog without sounding like you are self-publicising. The best way is to answer the question and then include “I’ve written a whole blog on this topic which might help answer this question further” and include a link. Obviously, don’t shoehorn an irrelevant blog into an answer, as this will harm your online presence.
Think about how accessible your blog is
Could your blog be turned into a podcast or YouTube video? Would an online presentation improve its impact and reach a wider audience? If more people can access your message and you make it easy enough for them, the more likely it is that you will increase your customer base.
Return, evaluate, refresh
You’ve done all the things we’ve suggested; now is the time to analyse your blog’s performance. Check to see what your reach was and whether it hit the target demographics you wanted. Did you receive much interaction? If you didn’t think about which bit failed to hit the mark (or call in a marketing professional for advice).
At the same time, make a note on your calendar to revisit the blog in six months to check to see if it needs to be refreshed. Search engines like regular content refreshes and provide you with the opportunity to reflect on what you’ve written and add any further pertinent points.
If you’ve found that you are not content with your content’s reach and would like some impartial and realistic advice on what you should do next, drop us an message.
