In the bestselling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, Habit #7 is: Sharpen The Saw.
There’s a story about a man who had been working diligently for hours to cut down a tree.
A passerby suggested he could cut it down faster if he would stop and sharpen the saw. But the man says he’s too busy sawing to stop and sharpen it.
If you’re working hard to produce fabulous content for your blog but not taking the time to make sure that it gets seen, you’re kind of like the man with the dull saw.
To make sure tons of people see your blog post you must take action. If you’re not willing to do this then you might as well stop creating blog posts.
Before we get to the tips for increasing exposure for your blog posts, here are some additional basics for creating a quality blog post. You want to break up the content into logical sections and use sub-headings when possible. Create space for people to read easily by breaking up long paragraphs. And of course, always include at least one powerful image.
OK, so you’ve got the awesome content, how do you make sure it gets seen by more people so you can expand your audience? Check out these 9 tips to dramatically increase the amount of exposure your blog posts get.
One Time Actions
1. Offer email sign up for notification of new blog posts. A great option for this is Mailchimp which is free up to 2,000 subscribers.
2. Add social media share buttons to each post. There are hundreds of options, here are a few: ShareThis, AddThis, WordPress Slick Social Share. View the top of this post to see my share buttons.
3. Add the WordPress plugin for most popular posts in your sidebar. See my sidebar for an example of this.
4. Add the WordPress plugin for related posts at the end of each blog post. Check out the end of this post to see an example of this.
5. Add the WordPress plugin for SEO, Yoast.
Ongoing Actions
6. Repost your content on social media channels, more on this below in #8 and #9. Only repost information that is evergreen or always relevant.
Think about it, not everyone probably saw it the first time you posted it. And even if they have already seen it, they may have forgotten about it. Or if they did read it, perhaps it wasn’t the right timing and they didn’t take action then and they will now.
It’s up to you whether or not you want to mention that it’s a repost.
Danielle LaPorte author of The Desire Map has used these phrases to introduce reposts:
- From the reserves:
- Dusted this off:
- Out of the vault:
Chris Guillebeau, author of The Art of Non-Conformity designates both new and previous posts with these introductions:
- New from AONC:
- AONC Archives:
Some additional ideas:
- Perfect time to reshare this one:
- Too important not to share again:
Marie Forleo doesn’t mention when she shares reposts and I don’t either. There isn’t a right or wrong way, just do what feels right for you.
7. Embed links to your other relevant blogs posts into your blog posts. It’s quite likely that the topics you cover in your blog are interrelated. Refer to your previous blog posts when creating a new one to identify relevant information you can link to.
8. Share your blog posts on social media. Share on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest (for more read: Pinterest for Small Business Onwers) and your Facebook page (see #9 below for a special tip on this).
9. A special tip for sharing your blog posts on your Facebook Page. Copy and paste the link to your post in the update area and Facebook will automatically populate the image and the description. Then you just have to add some interesting text to introduce your post and delete the link.
Take the time to implement the one-time actions mentioned above and then plan the ongoing tasks into your agenda.
This way, your blog posts will be seen by more people and the larger the your audience, the greater opportunity you have to attract more clients and grow your business.
© Stephanie Ward
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What do you do to make sure your blog posts get seen? Please share your thoughts and questions below in the comments section.
Hi Stephanie,
I think this is all stuff you should be bare minimum doing to promote your blog posts. But another thing is that you need to keep evolving your strategy. What I mean by this is that, no matter what strategy you use, guaranteed you will find at some point you are getting diminishing returns. At that point, of course, it’s time to try something new. This doesn’t mean abandoning things that are already working in favor of the next big thing. But it could mean trying something different every once in a while to connect with a new audience or to do something your current audience isn’t expecting.
Thank you for your feedback Heather, really important! There is always room for improvement and trying new things is critical to continued growth.
I’m off to try number 9 on your list as I had never thought of it despite knowing that pictures on FB increase engagement!
Thanks for the great advice Stephanie.
I appreciate your comments Anne. Please let me know if you see an increase in engagement from employing tip #9. All the best!
I plan to try #9 ASAP, never even knew that it could be done. Thanks so much for the tip.
Happy to share Nakita, it should increase the views you get.
Great tips. Love the examples given in #6. As for #9 that is just plain brilliant! I do use a picture when sharing on FB but to actually make a screenshot of the blog: Love it!