Smart Tactics to Maximize Your Blog’s Impact

As you probably know, writing a great quality, informative blog is not necessarily the easiest task for your team. It can require a great deal of research, time and effort to write, edit and publish.

So with as much effort that goes into writing the blog, doesn’t it make sense that you should put some work into maximizing its reach and overall ROI on your business?

In this article we will explain some tried and true tactics to help boost your blog post’s exposure to maximize reach, views and impact.

One you’ve got your masterpiece written, edited and published there are a number of things you can do to help promote and drive traffic to it. Of course there are all the typical social sharing tactics, but below you will find some less talked about that you can start implementing on your blog today.

Include on Relevant Website Pages:
Imagine someone is visiting your website and is interested in learning more about one of your products or services. They aren’t ready to buy, but simply are learning a bit more.

These are great places to hand select amazing blog posts that you can place on that product or service that help educate the visitor about it and help build that trust and relationship. Tip: I would suggest opening it in a new window so that it doesn’t pull them away from your product page.

Connect with Similar Content:
A very smart and popular way to future engage blog readers is to include a “Related” or “You may also like” module at the bottom of the blog where readers can enjoy other related content to the blog they just finished reading.

If you managed to get them to come to your website to read a blog on one subject, why not offer them other content that expands on that original idea? Just make sure that the content is hyper relevant to the blog it’s tagged on.

Build Links to It:
Working on link building to one of your blog posts may seem like a strange concept. However, this is important to do if you are trying to have that blog post rank for a long tail keyword. By working on building links to your blog it can boost its ranking in the SERPS, thus driving more organic search traffic to it.

One method is to secure some guest blogging spots on other credible websites and write about related topics. Then within your blog post you can reference your blog on your website and link to it. Make sure that you only link to it where it is very relevant and will provide additional education and value to the reader.

You could also search the web for other blogs or content related to the topic of your blog and reach out to the author of that content to see if they would be willing to add a link to your blog so their readers can get additional content on the subject.

This approach must be handled delicately because coming out of the woodwork and asking for a link probably will be met with a cold shoulder. Rather, start participating in comments and sharing their content. Build a relationship over time and when the time is right, mention your content may complement their blog well.

TIP: If you aren’t already, make sure that you have authorship and publisher tags on your blog to include rich snippet information. This, too, has been shown to increase CTR on SERPS by up to 33 percent!

Include Links in Related Premium Content:
If you’re doing Inbound Marketing correctly, you will probably have a number of ebooks, whitepapers, case studies and other premium content offers that you are creating.

Inside each piece of premium content, find places that it makes sense to link to other relevant blog posts. This could be directly in the copy or simply in an “Additional Resources” box that you’ve added at the end of every section with links to related blogs. This will not only drive more traffic back to your site but also give your readers more value and education.

Social Media:
This is probably a no-brainer for you and there’s a good chance that you are already sharing your blog content on your social channels. However, what you might not have thought of is when and how to share.

If you look at your Twitter statistics, you will probably see only about 7 to 9 percent of your Twitter followers logged on at any given time. What this means is that if you share your blog at 9AM, only 7 to 9 percent of your followers are likely to see it.

So it’s important that you share out your blog content multiple times throughout the day in different tweets. In other words, don’t copy and paste. You can use tools like Followerwonk to see when the most active times are and post then.

Monthly Newsletter:
There’s a good chance that you have people on your monthly newsletter who are not subscribed to your blog or do not visit your website. Including the latest or most popular blog posts within a newsletter is a great way to drive some additional traffic to your blog.

Make sure that you strategically pick the blogs that will best fit and interest the targeted segment that the newsletter is going to. This will add extra value to your newsletters and help drive visitors to your site.

Encourage Blog Subscription:
One of our goals for our blog should be to gain a loyal and engaged following of subscribers who love getting our blogs sent directly to them via RSS or email. The more people we can get subscribed, the more successful each blog will likely be.

So it’s very important that you make it very easy and clear where and how to subscribe. Make sure you include an engaging message (not just “subscribe”) to get them to subscribe. Think about including a free ebook for anyone who joins your list as an added incentive.

Word of Mouth:
As wrapped up in the digital world as we are, we tend to forget that direct person-to-person interactions can be some of the best times to share bits of information such as blogs.

Send your customer service and sales teams a list of relevant blogs that you’ve created that they can point people to. Many times the comments, questions or information people are seeking can be found on the blog and by referring them there it can really make a big impact.

Leverage Relationships:
All the great marketers and sales people know that relationships rule the world. Developing strong and genuine relationships with people can really help pay off when you really need to ask a favor.

One popular tactic in both blog and premium content production is to get with some of your industry friends who have complementary audiences and co-produce a blog or do an interview. It is likely that they will help promote the blog to their audience and thus you will gain access to a whole new group of people you normally wouldn’t be able to access.

Another tactic you can leverage is to simply ask your friends to share your content. I would only do this on rare occasions when it really matters. If there is a blog or piece of content you’re really gunning to perform well, then reach out and you will likely get those friends to help promote.

Just make sure you don’t do it too often and also make sure you help them share their content as well (even if they don’t ask you to).

These are just a few of the great tactics you can use to help gain extra exposure to your blogs. The more you can keep “blog promotion” top if mind in your day to day, the more likely you will think of other creative ways to incorporate blog exposure in other places.

If you have questions or ideas for other great ways to promote your blog, please post in the comments below!

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jjpacres/3293117576/sizes/l/in/photolist-62168f