Congratulations! You just wrote your first blog post! I know it took you just over 3 hours to write a measly 350 words but believe me, it’ll get easier – I promise! Now that it’s published, here’s a few thoughts on what to do next, (and I’ve also included a special offer at the end just for you).
First of all remember that blog posts are living things. They are not set in stone, there’s nothing concrete about them. We can always go back in and change things. With 571+ posts on this site I’m doing this all the time. Don’t forget that some of this is covered in my Ultimate Guide To Writing The Perfect Blog Post
STEP 1: EDIT AND REVIEW
Let’s go look at your post. Log out of your site and look at it as the public would. Do this on both a desktop AND a mobile device. How does it look?
Do you have enough pictures? Do you know how or where to get pictures and not get sued? Did you resize those images before you uploaded them?
ProTip: Make them all full size and centered in your posts. Even though your site is mobile responsive word wrapping is just wonky at certain widths.
Let’s talk about spelling, grammar and words. Although I do the best I can sometimes I find that I complete miss a word or misspell a word. Did you catch what I did there? It’s stuff exactly that.
(ooops I did it again) I like to go back and read my post out loud word for word. Sometimes I catch the most obvious of errors. Sometimes I don’t and it’s years before I find them. Either way, when you do, simply click the edit button and fix them.
Calls To Action: Does your post have one? Every post should. Add one now if you don’t already.
SEO: Did you use the SEO Plugin? Remember it’s just meant to be a guide but it’s a good guide. Did you use proper keywords that are relative to what you want to your goals? Goals? Yeah goals. You should be mindful of your goals for each and every post. Why are you writing it?
Transparency: My goal for this post is that you find it as valuable information, you share it with others, they see it and concur but also see that Mike builds great websites and in the end I gain a new client.
Ok, so we’re happy with everything in our blog post, let’s move on to…
STEP 2: DISTRIBUTION
The first thing you should do is send the post to your Facebook Page (not your Profile). Do this manually. When you do you’ll have a chance to write a smart preamble that might entice people to read. Your post snippet (via the SEO Plugin) should also have an enticing intro to the post.
From your Page you can share the post to your Profile. Once again you’ll have the chance to write something catchy as an intro. If you are keeping score at home… your post now in Facebook has 3 different intros to entice people to click to read.
Here’s the post on my Profile:
Misinformation: You might have heard that it was a violation of the Facebook TOS to share commercial posts to a Profile. They changed that rule a while ago. Go ahead and share to your Profile but please don’t let this be all you do on FB.
Do the same with Twitter, Linkedin, Google Plus and any other social network you are active in. You should be the first to share your posts in every network.
Mailing List: Of course you also have a mailing list (newsletter). One that automatically pulls from your blog posts? You can’t expect people to come back to your site to see if there’s anything new. We don’t work that way. We want our content pushed to us or in the case of my feed reader I pull it (automatically). You should have a mailing list, you should have something that encourages people to sign up for it, and you should be sending stuff out on a regular basis. Permission based marketing is a huge part of my overall strategy and a big sales funnel.
STEP 3: ACTIVATE YOUR TRIBE
I’m a big fan of Seth. I love the idea of a Tribe. Chances are you might be part of my Tribe. I might know that, I might not. If you share this post you might be part of my Tribe.
Now would be a good time to reach out to those people that you know to be on your Tribe and ask them to share this new post of yours. Ask them to weigh in, to leave a comment, to be a part of the conversation.
You can’t do this every time – you need to build what Tara calls Whuffie first (it’s a great book).
What’s a Tribe? Here’s Seth talking about Tribes. I’m a part of his Tribe.
STEP 4: RESPOND
Oh crap, I’m not done yet? Nope. Yet this is where most people stop. If you want to do half the job like all the rest, you’ll get the same results as all the rest. We can be better, right?
This is as simple as “Listen and respond”. It used to be that the conversations happened on the post in the comments, not any more. The conversations happen on social networks. When someone shares your post on FB or Twitter it’s there that the conversations are happening.
You need to be actively listening for those. This is the subject of a whole ‘nuther post but let’s start with just your post that was shared by you. When someone shares that post FB will tell you that “Jim Smith shared your post”.
Follow that link. Thank that person for sharing it. Did they have a comment that they added while sharing it? Watch the comments that other people add. Add to the conversation. Engage others. The more you interact, the more your post will be read.
All of this takes time but considering that you just spent 3 hours writing 350 words don’t you think you owe it to yourself to help your post reach it’s full potential?
SPECIAL BONUS: JUST FOR READING
If I built your site, chances are when you write your first post I’ll have already reviewed it and will give you a report back on what you could do better. If you made it this far and I didn’t build your site I offer you this. Give me just one of your posts to review and I’ll go through it and the website in general and give you my honest opinion. No sales pitch, just ways in which you can be a better blogger. Deal? Cool! Here’s a form: (that’s my call to action) 🙂
Photo by Mr Cup / Fabien Barral on Unsplash
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and now,a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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