Your Must-Have Checklist for Successful Blog Promotion (Infographic)

Editor’s note: Given ongoing demand for better content promotion, the author updated his earlier posts on blog promotion with this fresh checklist.

Unfortunately, while you might like to click “publish” on a blog post and wipe your hands clean, savvy marketers recognize that the work is only beginning. Without an effective and repeatable process for promoting blog posts and maximizing their visibility, all the hard work spent creating them can easily go to waste.

To help you with this component, I’d like to present a fresh take on a handy infographic that my team created in 2012, The Future-Proof Checklist for Promoting Your Blog Post, which you can find below in infographic and text form.

While important, most of these actions are more procedural than creative, letting you reserve your brainpower for the blog post creation process. By following this checklist, which is customized to highlight today’s (and tomorrow’s) most impactful amplification techniques, you can be confident you’re doing all that is necessary to squeeze every last drop of juice from your content.

Follow #blog promotion checklist to squeeze every last drop from your content, says @BrodyDorland. Click To Tweet

Read it, save it, print it, pin it. Follow this blueprint consistently to make some noise with your content marketing.

Click to enlarge

1. Get visual

The data is clear: Strong visuals are needed to grab the attention of today’s web user. If you’re including all text or only dull stock images, you’re not setting yourself up for success. We recommend including in any blog post:

• One bold and relevant feature image
• Two additional images to support the body and narrative of your text
• One punchy interactive or animated visual embed (meme, GIF, short video, etc.)

2. Optimize for search

SEO best practices change as quickly as the algorithms that dictate them, but some cornerstones for gaining search visibility will never go out of style:

• Identify a target keyword, plus several longtail variations, and populate them throughout your post.
• Run Google searches for these terms to learn about types of content already ranking.
• Use tools like BuzzSumo and Answer the Public to find out what’s trending socially around the topic.
• Write a meta description that accurately depicts what’s inside and compels a click.
• Draft an irresistible title tag that includes your target keyword.
• Crosslink to other relevant content within your post, leveraging keywords in anchor text.

Use tools like @buzzsumo & @answerthepublic to find out what’s trending socially, says @BrodyDorland. Click To Tweet

3. Plan for social

Social media is made for sharing. But with so much sharing going on across every network, a well-crafted approach is critical. You’ll want to lay groundwork for a sound social strategy, mixing organic and paid promotion. Take these steps before clicking “publish”:

Mix organic and paid promotion on social media to amplify your blog post, says @BrodyDorland Click To Tweet

• Develop a budget for paid reach on the channels used most by your audience.
• Draft several different sets of social copy for organic posts tailored to each network.
• Build relationships with influencers and thought leaders with authority around the post topic (outreach, social interactions, comments on blogs, etc.).
• Identify online communities, groups, or forums covering the subject area, and create a helpful presence.

4. Engage your email list

Much like social media, email remains an effective platform for blog promotion, but today’s environment necessitates more nuanced and thoughtful campaign execution. Here are a few ways to make your deliveries more dynamic:

• Use an RSS-to-email feature to automate blog post deliveries.
• Segment your subscriber list and target only groups relevant to the post topic.
• Write attention-grabbing subject lines, and A/B test to optimize.
• Make sure formatting is clean, simple, and (above all) mobile-friendly.
• Include links for recipients to share socially directly from the email.

5. Follow through on social

The prep from Step 3 will make this one a breeze. Now that your post is live in the wild, it’s time to share and amplify via social media so people can find it. Follow this formula:

• Publish organic posts with teasers, trackable shortlinks, and eye-catching images on your social networks of choice.
• Schedule several spaced-out posts to those same networks over the following days and weeks.
• Boost your best-performing organic promo posts through paid amplification.
• Reach out to influencers whose specialties tie to the subject and ask if they’d like to share (providing them with pre-written posts will make it easy for them).
• Include the social handles of experts mentioned or quoted in the post to get their attention.
• Share the post in relevant communities or groups where you’ve established a presence.

6. Spread the word

There are additional actions you can take to maximize your blog post’s reach and impact. For example:

• Add a link to your email signature so it appears at the bottom of each message you send.
• Include the post in your company’s next newsletter.
• Write a guest blog post for a popular industry site and link back to your post.
• Share directly with high-value customers who are most likely to find the post useful.
• Link to your post on social bookmarking sites like Digg or StumbleUpon.
• Encourage coworkers to share in their networks.

#Blog promotion tip: Add a link to it in your #email signature, says @BrodyDorland. Click To Tweet

7. Continue ongoing promotion

The work doesn’t stop. To truly get the most out of your post, and set up future entries for success, you’ll want to make sure you’re systematically enhancing your promotion process for sustainability. Build a routine around these practices:

• Monitor analytics vigilantly to determine which channels are driving the most traffic and invest more in top referrers.
• Switch your headline and/or imagery if the post isn’t gaining traction.
• Thank influencers and peers who shared your post; pay back the favor by sharing their content.
• Grow your personal brand to expand your network and find new readers.

Hit ‘publish’ and promote on

Creating an exceptional blog post is hard work. Don’t do it a disservice by failing to properly promote and amplify. 

• Develop a budget for paid reach on the channels used most by your audience.
• Draft several different sets of social copy for organic posts tailored to each network.
• Build relationships with influencers and thought leaders with authority around the post topic (outreach, social interactions, comments on blogs, etc.).
• Identify online communities, groups, or forums covering the subject area, and create a helpful presence. 

Consistently following this checklist will ensure that your content doesn’t fall silently in an empty forest.

Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used). 

Get more tips and insight on how to maximize your content at Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7. Register today using code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute