The Other 80 Percent: Publicity Strategies for Blogs

You’ve written an amazing blog post.  I mean, it’s maybe some of the most epic stuff you’ve ever written. You made yourself cry. This blog post is literally going to change the world of anyone who reads it.

You hit publish.

Nothing happens.  For days.  Digital crickets.

“Is it me?” you wonder as you try not to refresh the page for the hundredth time, looking for a comment, a like, anything. “Maybe it wasn’t as good as I thought it was… Maybe I’m a terrible writer… Maybe I should just pack it all in and go back to working at that big corporation…”

Maybe you neglected to promote it.

Derek Halpern of Social Triggers says that you should spend 80 percent of your time promoting content you produce for your blog. Does that number sound high? When I was in a slump one month, my business coach, Tommi Wolfe, asked me how much time I was spending marketing myself. I made up a number (not having been keeping track of that sort of thing), and she told me that it’s a generally accepted rule that if you’re actively looking for new customers, you should be spending fully half your working hours marketing yourself. (In other words, if you work 8 hours a day, 4 of them should be spent on some kind of marketing work.)

And your blog is one of your best marketing tools, right? (It is if you’re following the 5 Ws of the Editorial Calendar Blueprint!)

But most bloggers don’t do that.  Most bloggers are focused on the outdated concept that they need MORE content and that they need to post MORE often—that was good advice back in about 2007, but so many people have followed it that nowadays, more content isn’t going to set you apart from the crowd; better content is.

More content isn’t going to set you apart from the crowd; better content is. (TWEET THAT!)

I know that a lot of you are already writing astonishingly good content, but only a few people are finding it. Maybe you dream of having a post go “viral,” but you don’t know how to make that happen. Maybe you’ve realized that you need to be getting in front of a lot more eyeballs if you want your blog to convert to the sales you want to see.

This, my friends is the WHERE of our editorial calendar process, as in: WHERE am I going to promote my stuff?

Promotion requires publicity strategies

Big surprise, I’m going to tell you that you need to have a STRATEGY around your promotions—because if you don’t, you’re just throwing stuff up against a wall to see what sticks, right? And you’re way too busy for that.

• If you have very low traffic or are just getting started guest posting is your very best bet for building traffic, but you have to guest post in the right places. With my food blog, I was absolutely stoked beyond belief when I was invited to be a guest blogger on the (now defunct) Martha Stewart website Whole Living Daily. But the reality is that I got many hundreds more opt-ins to my website from a well-crafted guest post on a site called And Then We Saved (in fact, that one post doubled my list). Want to know more about guest blogging? Check out these articles.
• You must know where your ideal reader hangs out, because that’s where YOU need to be hanging out. I recently recommended to a client that she get start engaging in the conversations on Oprah’s community website as well as the communities for Crazy Sexy Life and Her Future—because she told me that her ideal customer watches Oprah’s Lifeclass.
• The best way to get someone to do something for you is to do something for them first. This is kind of a golden rule of blog promotion. Just recently, a lovely blogger listed me as one of 11 blogs that will skyrocket your career. Then she emailed me to let me know about it and said, “I know my readers will love it! Feel free to share it with yours if you wish!” Do you think I shared it? Why yes I did, because it made me look good!  And I was happy to help someone out who did something nice for me.
• You don’t know unless you ask. From now on, you should email everyone you link to and let them know that you’ve written about them.  Period.  Want a template for what that email would look like?  Here you go. Just add your details and you’re all set.

In short, you’ve got to plan how you’re going to promote your posts, even before you write them. You don’t have to go all out for every single post, but the bigger the post, the more you want to promote it.

And if you need some more ideas, or some more specific advice to your situation, I’d be happy to talk.

Love this? Share it! Don’t leave me hanging with digital crickets. 😉