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| How to market blog posts |
Written by Robyn T. Braley
So, you've published a brilliant blog post. You've told a compelling story. Now what? This post provides 10 practical tips for promoting blog posts.
Rotary has amazing stories to tell. Blogging is an excellent way to tell them.
Blogging takes more time, discipline and planning than most other social media platforms. The challenge is to think long term and to develop an editorial strategy.
What does that mean? In simple terms, you've written your first post. What comes next?
Building the Rotary Brand (BTRB) blog posts are serve a single purpose; to help increase the exposure and community engagement levels of your local club. Including social media in your strategies is a no brainer.
Here is the good news. Once you have established a social media presence with channels like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or other platforms, you have ready-made tools for promoting your blog posts.
But, before I ramble on, you may want to check out these recent posts. They will provide background to this article.
Part 1 - Write On! Blogging is a Great Way to Tell Stories and Build Communities! Tips
Part 2 - Choosing a Blogging Platform With the Tools to Enhance Your Stories
Traditional Marketing
Promote your sites anywhere and everywhere including with your traditional marketing tools.
Include social media icons on all club communications materiel like business cards, letter head, brochures and other collateral. If you have a permanent club sign and have room, include the icons below your club logo.
There are two reasons for doing this.
- To encourage others to search out your platforms and follow, friend, connect and possibly forward your content to their own social media communities.
- To make a visual statement that your club is current, relevant and up-to-date.
Personal Emails
Because I still operate my branding, speaking and writing businesses, I don’t include Rotary links in my emails. Don’t get me wrong. My clients all know I’m a Rotarian because of the stories I tell about service projects.
However, if you are retired or use a Rotary-only email account, include links to your club website and social media sites including your blogsite. Search for relevant icons and insert them with links at the bottom of your email above or below your signature. That makes it easy to for email recipients to click through and engage with your club.
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| My email signature with SM links |
Share Buttons
You’ve all seen floating or embedded social media share buttons in blog posts. The purpose is obvious.
These buttons enable readers to easily share your content within their social media communities and networks. When this happens, you expand your reach by exposing your content to new audiences.
I feel floating icons are best. They make it easy for readers to respond emotionally to content that inspires them, provides useful information they think others will want to know, or they simply like it. Share buttons are a call to action.
Search within your blogsite platform like WordPress for share plugins. They make it easy.
Content Curation
This is where the importance of content curation comes into play. Go through your post and copy key phrases or sentences. Include any quotes made by others or brilliant observations that you have written yourself.
Why Quality Content is the Key for Social Media Success. 21 Tips!
If your post is lengthy, create a new document (page) for each topic within your article and store them in a common folder. That makes your content easy to find to cut and paste into your social media feeds.
- Text
- Graphic images
- Photos
- Videos
- Podcasts/Audio
Adapt your message to meet the protocols for each platform that you use. Insert appropriate hash tags and links. Video and podcast files can be embedded or attached to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other platform messages.
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| These messages have been copied from this post. They are processed for Twitter promotion as tweets. Note the blog post link has been shortened using Hootsuite |
Images
Photos and graphic images substantially increase your audience engagement level. They grab attention and draw people in. Create a file with photos and graphics specific to each blog. Again, this reduces management time and simplifies automation.
Photos
Select photos that tell stories. If you must augment your picture with text to explain what is happening, you will use precious space. For example, tweets use only 140 characters including spaces.
If you do not have photos or graphic images directly related to your story, use free images from an online resource. This site lists 20 such sites offering public domain, creative commons and royalty free photos.
Graphics
Canva is an amazing online service. You can create graphics using their stock photos and design elements and choose easy-to-use text overlays.
All you have to do is insert your own message and save it into your graphics file. You can also upload original photos.
Canva is particularly great for quotes. However, it can also be creatively limiting.
Canva Graphics Creation
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| Created using a free Canva photo,a graphic template and inserting original text into a text overlay |
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| Created using PowerPoint by following the steps below |
One of the simplest of many ways to create original graphics is by using PowerPoint. I’ll write a post about using PowerPoint for club promotion in the future.
PowerPoint features make it east to crop photos and do basic photo enhancement. Unlike with Canva, you must create text boxes and choose fonts. Choosing background colors or design textures is easy.
The rectangle format provides more space and options for social media than the square format. However, if you are also using the slides for live presentations, the square format may be best as they become multi-functional.
Easy PowerPoint Graphics
- Open a PowerPoint file
- Click ‘Design’ and go to the right hand side to ‘format background.’ Choose a background that will best enhance your content. For example, white makes black or navy text really pop. Dark blue make white text jump off the image.
- Click insert to bring in photos, logos or other PNG or JPEG files.Adjust the size for look and feel.
- Click ‘file’ and go down to ‘save as’
- Click ‘save as’
- Click the archive file at the top that you want to save it in. I suggest creating a new envelope for each new post.
- Give your image a title
- Click the ‘down arrow’ on ‘save as type’
- Click JPEG
- Click save and a box will come up
- Click ‘just this one’
Voila! Instant graphic for social media.
Social Media Promotion
- Cut and paste your pre-selected content into your automation or platform feed.
- Include a link to your blogpost
- Attach a photo or image
- Send or schedule in your automation platform
If you are using an automation platform like Tweetdeck, Hootesuite or Buffer, repeat your message on different days and at different times of the day. Schedule some for the middle of the night. Remember, Rotary never sleeps.
If you have quoted someone or have a friend who uses social media, tag them. They will probably forward your message to their communities. It’s human nature to want to be recognized for your work.
For Rotary, tag various clubs, districts and Rotary International. If the content of your blog is relevant to their interests, they will probably forward your messages.
Keyword Research
Being strategic about the words and phrases you use can add to your exposure. They will improve the search engine ranking of your blog post. A keyword search will indicate what target audiences are searching for.
Explaining the complexities of search engine optimization can become geeky. Those reading this who know me understand that any explanation relating to technology must be simple enough for me to understand. Really simple!
Let's try this. When researching keywords, imagine you are looking over the searchers shoulder. See the screen from their perspective.
- What do they want?
- What are they searching for?
- How will the content in your post help them?
Including ranking keywords make it easier to create blog posts that are relevant and provide value.
- Type in Free Keywords Planner.
- Type the main keyword that describes the post content (e.g., clean water, micro-credit, community service) into the search box. Click ‘Get ideas’ for the result. Now work the suggested keywords into your text near the top.
Build an Email List
Building an email list specific to your blogsite is one of the first things you should do. Your goal will be to translate casual traffic into serious subscribers.
Check out list-building software like SumoMe plugin, List Builder, Scroll Box, OptinMonster and LeadPages.
Include contact emails from people who have had some form of positive contact with your club. Lists could include former speakers, club visitors, former members and more. Be sure that adding such information complies with the Anti-Spam Laws of your country,
Click here for list ideas
An Easy Way to Marketing Rotary! Harness the Power of Emails
How Can This Help
Once you have built your list, it will be easy to send a group email to promote future blogs. Do some research to gather information about what the best times to broadcast are. Generally, Wednesday morning at 10 am in your time zone is the best broadcast time .
The End
What do you think? Do you publish a blog? Do you have tips? What platform do you use? What do you like about it? I want to hear from you. Please comment below.
Robyn Braley is a brand specialist, professional speaker and writer. He is also a Rotarian who is passionate about Building the Rotary Brand. He has led two teams that received the Rotary International PR Award. He has also served as the PR Chair for District 5360. He often speaks at Rotary clubs, conferences and leadership development assemblies.
Contact Robyn
Email: robyn@robyntbraley.com Connect on LinkedIn Follow on Twitter: @rtbraley_rotary
Other BTRB Posts and Links
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