Once you’ve written your business blog, you have to promote it. Otherwise how will anyone else other than your Mom and your dog know it’s out there and of interest to your readers?
This is where many bloggers crumble and feel that to promote their wise words across the internet is like boasting / bragging and really is shameful. I have one word to say to that:
Bullsh*t
If you’re in business, you have every right to promote your business blog. In fact, business sense says that you must.
You do this via your mailing list and other direct contacts and connections you may have, but above all, you do it via Social Media.
No doubt you’re already involved with a number of social media (SocMed) platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Depending on your particular industry, some of the SocMed sites are going to be more useful to you than others.
Here are some tips on how I promote my posts/articles/tutorials on some of the SocMed sites …
Facebook
If you have a business page on Facebook, you’ll find that its reach has been restricted quite severely recently due, no doubt, to FB wanting to increase the monetizing of its activities. Bottom line: you need to pay to get your business page posts viewed beyond a very small percentage of your followers. Check out this article here which suggests how you might get around the problem.
Meanwhile when sharing posts and articles on your FB business page, make sure you link correctly to the places concerned.
And always write a lead-in … something to accompany your posts – an explanation, a short introduction or other quip – if you don’t want them to look like spam
Google Plus
As far as I can understand it there are no real restrictions on how you promote your blog posts as public shares on Google Plus provided, of course, that they are credible, decent and offer some value. Be sure to hashtag them appropriately. I try to avoid using more than two or maximum three hashtags as otherwise the post begins to look a bit like a three-ring circus.
Where your post may well attract more traffic is from various communities allied to what you do, but be careful: many communities have strict rules about what you can and can’t post, so do check first their rules first if you don’t want to get banned.
As with Facebook, always write a lead-in to whatever you post, and if you post the same article to more than one community as well as the “public” variety, ensure that each lead-in is different. People don’t want to read stuff posted by robots.
LinkedIn
Once again I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules about what you can share on LinkedIn apart from the obvious restrictions of decency, relevance and value.
With the LinkedIn audiences being so very business focused, however, you need to make sure your post is not only relevant to a business audience but of a sufficiently sophisticated standard to meet that business audience’s criteria.
As with the other SocMed platforms a good lead-in is helpful, but as my good friend and fellow networker Mark Orr says about people posting on LinkedIn, “My own policy is not to click on the link in any discussion post in LinkedIn that doesn’t have some detail in it beyond the simple headline. I would like the person posting to invest a little more of their time helping me to make an informed judgment about investing my own time in (reading) their post.”
Mark is right! So be sure to use your lead-in to suggest “what’s in it for you” for people if you want them to read your new post.
Twitter
Here we have a different ballgame. But even within 140 characters there can still be room to create some sort of brief come-hither words, even after the post title, as hashtags. Unless your blog post headline suggests a benefit for readers, consider using a few extra words in your tweet that hint at what readers will get from clicking on through.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is very sweet, precious and middle class American … it doesn’t like naughty words or thoughts. Just today it rejected a share from me by saying words to the effect of “you can’t share any more posts here today” when in fact it turned out their real problem with it was that the headline contained the word “whiskey,” and I had categorized the post as “safe for work.”
As soon as I retried without using the dreaded Prohibition word, all was sweetness and light again. Be conscious of this prissiness and word your lead-in and keywords appropriately…
Pinterest
With Pinterest you need to pick and choose. Bearing in mind their demographic, the heaviest-weight business articles are unlikely to attract much attention. Much as so-called “social media experts” proclaim that Pinterest is a good platform for business of all kinds, my own experience and understanding is that yes, OK, but realistically if you blog about plumbing tools in Poland or fish gutting in New Brunswick, Pinterest ain’t the platform for you.
If your product or service is attuned to the Pinterest mainstream readership – especially across the visual and other creative arts, retail, luxury goods, weddings, cooking and gastronomy, sports, writing, health, etc. etc. – by all means post and you’ll get some interest. Be sure that your illustration is good, too, or your post won’t attract much attention.
With Pinterest I always share a good lead-in and make it clear that the picture isn’t everything, usually by writing “…read on!” at the end of the lead-in.
And that’s my own personal roundup.
What experience do you have of promoting your blog posts on social media?
Please share! Let’s pool our experiences and recommendations here.