Small businesses everywhere are using blogs as part of their marketing plans. If you work with me, I will encourage you to have a blog on your website and to regularly add new content.
Why have a blog?
There are so many good reasons why you should have a blog as an integral part of your website.
- It shows your expertise
- It shares your news
- It helps your customers by giving them the answers to their questions
- It’s good for SEO and helping you get found online
- It gives people something new to come back to you, if you keep it up to date
- If you get team members to contribute it can make them feel like an integral part of your business
- Once you have invested in a website, adding subsequent blog content is free
How to make the most of your blog content
But what are you actually doing with it? If you are simply posting it on your website and hoping people will read it, you are missing a big opportunity and this is the guide for you. There are so many places you can post your blog, and so many ways you can recycle it. In the digital marketing world this is referred to as repurposing, which is really just a fancy term for squeezing every last drop out of each post.
Sharing your blog with your customers
Firstly ensure your customers have seen your blog. You can add it to your e-newsletter, or include the content in a regular printed publication. You may want to add a link to it from your email, include a link in order confirmations or invoices if appropriate. You can also use it as a quick way to answer customer questions, whether via email or on social media.
Sharing your blog on social media
Social media gives endless possibilities for sharing blog posts. You should share it on any platforms on which you are active. But don’t just feel that you should only share it once. Key points can be turned into quote posts or polls. You can also turn the ideas into a video, or film yourself doing a short promotional post talking about one key point and directing people to read the rest of the details on your website. Live video is also a great way to share your content.
Don’t forget that any evergreen content (that is, content which isn’t connected to any particular date or event) can be reused again in a few months.
Evaluate the results
Once you have shared it across your various platforms, you should take a look at your analytics. Each social media platform has its own analytics, where you can see how many people have seen each post, and how many people responded to it by liking or sharing it. You can also look at your website analytics, to see if you have significantly more web traffic as a result of the blog, and which social media channel has driven the most traffic to the site.
Once you have that data you can start to plan the next blog and think about where and when you are going to post it.
How often should I blog?
This is a very personal decision and will depend on many things, including the time you have available. Don’t forget if you are short of time to write and post each blog, you can outsource this, and get someone to write it for you based on your ideas and key points. The key thing is to be consistent with your new content.
What I found when I repurposed my blog
I wrote a blog post including 4 Marketing Tips for Introverts earlier this month. This is part of a series that links to my free guide and also my Successful Personal Branding Toolkit for Introverts. I ran an experiment to see how easy it was to share that content in the most places. My list looks like this.
- Shared it with my newsletter mailing list
- Included it as a reminder to the same list the following week
- Shared it on my business Facebook page
- Shared it in 2 separate Facebook groups I am a visible member of
- Tweeted it several times
- Included it as an Instagram post
- Posted it on Instagram Stories
- Shared a short video on Facebook and on IGTV
- Shared it as a LinkedIn article
- Turned it into an infographic and shared it on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
- Shared individual quotes from the blog as social media posts
- Included it in an email to a potential customer as part of a pitch
- Added it to my email signature
- Added it to my customer invoices
These are all things I have done from my own phone and laptop taking relatively little time and using free software. In the longer term I also have plans for it to be a presentation, a podcast episode and a guest blog. Results wise, the straight blog post on Facebook, video and infographic all reached a similar size audience but the video gained less engagement than the other 2. On Instagram the grid post performed much better than the IGTV. On LinkedIn my post about the benefits of flexible working with a photo of my big woolly socks performed better than my blog post! This is all part of a process of testing and measuring what works best and what resonates best with my ideal audience.
So if you are blogging regularly, don’t forget to make the maximise the all-important distribution and promotion stage. Your blog posts are valuable content, and if you make the most of every one you will get into a repurposing habit and find you grow your audience and your reputation for your expertise.
If you would like a checklist to help you plan all the different ways you can use your blog content, you can download “19 ways to supercharge your blog“
My Successful Personal Branding: A toolkit for Introverts includes advice on how to plan and distribute your blog content. The toolkit is available at the launch price of £35.
