by Esther Adeniyion January 24, 2019March 5, 201919 Comments on What to do after you publish a blog post
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It’s not fair I know but if you must thrive as a Blogger you have to wear many caps – content creator, content marketer, in some cases, photographer, amateur graphic designer, video editor, content editor.
You are the empire and your hype man at the same time. You determine how far you go by how well you perform. You determine how well you perform by how many people you are able to bring in to your empire and not just bring in, how many of them you enchant.
What I see a lot of Bloggers do are:
1. Not promote
Except you are Ronaldo, nobody is coming to check your new blog post. Oh well, if you have made a decent name for yourself as a Blogger, you should have a sizeable number of people check in every day. Otherwise, you have a new blog post sitting pretty waiting for its sibling.
2. Promote too aggressively
Wheeew! How much is too much though? When your WhatsApp contacts begin to block you, lol. So, I think it’s possible to share your blog post too aggressively and piss the hell out of people.
You might peep into this blog post I wrote some time ago about whatsapp blogging. I gave out some useful strategies on how to make sure you are not being pesky with your blog link sharing.
3. Promote crap
You know, it’s one thing to promote, it’s another to promote nonsense. I apologize if that hurts. I didn’t find another word.
If you are sharing a blog post I have zero interest in, you are promoting crap to me. If you are sharing a blog post that’s boring, full of grammatical blunders, stressful to read, unrelatable, bogus, ugly, shabbily written, offensive, out of general blog context, full of graphic content etc, you are promoting crap.
You can’t be 100% sure that what you are promoting is relevant to who you are sharing it with, you can, however, be 99% sure.
So, I have a WhatsApp Broadcast list I share my blogging resources with and 99% of them are Bloggers or prospective Bloggers. What I share to these folks can’t ever be crap.
One more example and I am done talking about promoting crap. If I click on your blog link and your title, blog article and pictures are boring as heck, you just sold crap to me and I will get angry at you.
I personally detest crap. I can imagine how much more of that you are going to put me through all in the name of your blog. Enough of crappy content, I am obviously pissed. Been put through a lot, lol.
After you publish that awesome blog post, what you do afterward can make or mar all your efforts.
I mean, think about how much of brainstorming you did to get that blog written, the curating of the entire material, editing and finally a live post. I honestly think that it is too much of stress to not hit it right just after publishing.
Contents
Oh well, we can’t get on to promoting just immediately. What posts are similar to the one you just published? Start my promoting your blog post to your blog first, lol.
Interlinking helps a lot for your SEO. That blog post is also likely to get referral traffic from within your blog. This is good, lower bounce rates, longer time on site, more pages per visit. Overall, good site stats.
Well, that depends on a lot of things. Now, if you have written a well-optimized article and you want it to rank on search engines, you might want to force Google crawlers to index immediately.
Usually, depending on how frequently Google crawls your site, it may take hours or even days for the crawlers to discover and then index your blog post.
Truth is that there are instances where an hour-long new post discovery is too long a time. Say, for example, it’s a trending keyword that is likely to leave the scene in days, weeks, or at most, months.
You want this blog post to begin its journey to its desired ranking sooner than patience. Usually, when you submit to search console, it is going to assume a temporary position on Google’s pages.
After a while, Google watches how people interact with it, compare it with other factors and then gives it a ‘permanent’ position. You want this process to kick start quickly when you submit to Google Search Console.
If you have not signed up for Google Search Console, you should do this immediately. After signing up, you have to verify your property. This verification process is usually easier if you have signed up for Google Analytics.
So I advise that you sign up for Google Analytics if you haven’t.
Visit Google Search Console
Log in to your Google Search Console dashboard
Click on the property you want to access if you have more than one properties on that account
By default, this will take you to the new search console. On the left side of the dashboard, click on “go to old version” to switch to the old search console
On the left-hand side of the dashboard menu, click on ‘crawl’
On the drop-down menu, click on ‘Fetch as Google’
In the box, as shown, paste in the URL of the article and delete your blog’s main URL.
In this case; from “https://estheradeniyi.com/the-upside-2019-movie-review/” to “/the-upside-2019-movie-review/”
Click on ‘fetch’
Then click on ‘request indexing’
In the dialogue box that pops up, tick ‘I’m not a robot’ and click on the first option. “crawl only this URL”. This is to allow only the URL you are submitting to be crawled.
That’s it! You have submitted your URL for immediate indexing on Google.
Let me know if you run into any problems doing this in the comments section below.
Of course, this is the first of many of the things Bloggers do after they publish their blog posts.
So, share on with your Facebook friends, on your Facebook page (if you have one), on Twitter, on Instagram and LinkedIn, if it fits the audience.
When you are sharing your blog posts on social media, be sure to craft a copy that’s compelling with a persuasive Call-To-Action. Be careful not to come off as rude, entitled and demanding.
Some of the mistakes Bloggers make when sharing their blog posts on social media are:
- Sharing their blog posts in the wrong places. Some groups are the wrongest places to share your blog post.
One, it doesn’t match the audience. Two, it doesn’t follow the general group rules. Remember, too aggressive can piss people off. You must find a balance.
There are some blog posts that don’t fit some platforms too. Your LinkedIn connection would not like to click on a blog post that has to do with natural hair hacks for example.
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Sharing vague links. Asking people to click to check your new blog post is not going to make them do so. What is the blog post about? Can you give them a hint? Don’t just blog’s URL and ask people to go cruise about your blog.
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Sharing naked links. You want your links to generate a thumbnail or in the least, add a picture.
I didn’t put this point in the social media section. This is because Pinterest is not a social media platform, it is a search engine and as such I have decided to treat it as that.
Design your pin
Use beautiful, long images. You can use Canva or Picmonkey to design your pins if you are not good at Graphics design, like I am not too. Make the text on your pins legible and bold.
Pin at optimal times
You can use Tailwind app to find your optimal times and pin during those times. Make sure to write good, SEO descriptions and pin to relevant boards.
Also, pin to group boards
Since you can’t get the most from search engines to a new blog post just yet, you want to use the platforms available to you to gain traction for a start. Get more eyes on your pin by pinning on group boards.
Please, pin my post to your blogging related boards and group boards if you find it useful. This would make me happy as my message spreads faster. Thank you.
This is where we have to talk about why you need an email list.
An email list is usually full of interested subscribers than not. It is so much easier if your blog is niched. Say for example, you blog about skin care alone, people subscribing are definitely subscribing because they are skin care enthusiasts.
Blasting a campaign to share your blog posts will most definitely meet the right audience.
If you are however a lifestyle Blogger like me, you want to create different emailing lists. This is like separating your audience into categories.
For example, I have a music email list, review email list, blogging resources email list and the general email list for Esther Adeniyi as a blog.
My music email list is embedded in highly performing music articles. My review email list is embedded in my review posts, same for Blogging resources. The general email list is the one by my sidebar.
I do this so that I meet the ideal audience for each category of blog posts. If I share a new song with the people on the music email list for example, number of unsubscribes and generally pissed up people will be very minimal. They are also most likely to open and click on your link.
Tips to make your email blast effective
- Use catchy email titles
- Don’t copy and paste your whole blog post in your email. They are just going to read it all in your email. Put short paragraphs as teasers and get them to go to your blog post.
- Do not put more than two links in your email.
I seem to have talked about this in some earlier post. Two of the most popular Web Push notification programs are One Signal and Subscribers. I currently use Subscribers.
For lifestyle Bloggers, web push notifications are usually tricky because you can’t segregate your subscribers like you would for email lists.
Someone may be visiting your blog for the first time by a movie review link and as a result fall in love. They most likely would unsubscribe if you push a blog post on health and fitness.
It is much more easier for niched blogs. Either way, web push notification is a good strategy for promoting your blog post after publishing.
One good forum to submit your blog post on is Nairaland. People make the mistake of copying all or most of the post and pasting.
You run the risk of duplicating your own content with your own hands on the internet. It’s better to write teasers with your article link. That may be separate writing but it shouldn’t take long. A powerful 100 word teaser should do.
You can also share your blog post on your WhatsApp status. Simply put an image up and paste the URL link in the next status.
You can share as a broadcast message. Please read my blog post on WhatsApp Blogging for insights on permissions and target audience.
If you have groups that discuss similar topics to what you have written, you can also share.
If you have people who share the same interests offline, you can let them know that you have a blog post as regards it, they would like it.
There are times you also stumble on discussions in forums and groups or posts, you can get involved and tell them they have more stuff to get on your blog.
Promoting your work sometimes requires much more than writing and curating your content.
Some content marketers even say 20% of your strategy should be for writing while the remaining 80% should be for content promotion.
Well, I think that’s a lot if you ask me. A 50-50 allocation is safer for me. A very good, carefully written content sometimes moves on its own after giving it the initial push.
What are you going to add to your post-publish strategy?
Featured Image : GetApp Lab
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