Congratulations! There’s nothing like the feeling you get after pressing the big publish button and surrendering a blog article to the vast range of opinions on the Internet. It doesn’t matter if it’s your first post or your five-hundredth, publishing content feels fantastic.
Unless no one reads it.
Publishing a blog article is a great way to self-analyze yourself and your craft, but ultimately we write because we want people to read our work, right? We want to demonstrate our subject matter expertise and engage with an audience. Well, your work won’t necessarily get read just because you want it to. You could write an article predicting next week’s lotto numbers and it won’t get read unless you put in a little more time.
Here are 4 simple steps to take after you publish that will get your article the attention it deserves.
1. Social Media Support
The only way to get the ball rolling is to push it in the right direction yourself. Set aside some time to share your article on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any social channel central to your business.
And don’t just share your blog article once; share multiple times to increase the number of people who will see your article. After publishing a new article in the morning, here’s the typical sharing schedule I follow:
- On publish
- 6 hours after publishing
- The day after publishing
- The following week after publishing
- And once the following month with the good ol’ ICYMI (in case you missed it) hashtag.
- On publish
- One month after publishing
- On publish
There’s no magic formula, but you’ll get better results if you share your article multiple times. Do some research into the best times to post to social media and be sure to check your social analytics data (Facebook Insights, for example) for the times when your audience is most active on each channel.
2. Focus on Selecting a Strong Headline
A good headline is the key to every successful blog post. No one reads a post without first being drawn in by a persuasive headline.
For example, and I shudder using this example, but Buzzfeed has built an empire on emotionally-charged headlines. I jest, but seriously, who doesn’t want to read a post called: 10 Reasons We’re Better Than Dinosaurs?
I enjoy using CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to fine-tune my headline options. Not only does it allow me to compare the strength of my tentative headlines, it also suggests categories that might improve my headline score, such as the number of power words, overall readability, and emotional impact.
3. Write Unique Post Copy for Each Social Channel
Now, just because you’re sharing your post multiple times doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to keep recycling the same post copy over and over again. Yes, it takes a little bit of extra work, but sharing your work with slightly altered post copy will attract more readers who relate differently.
The post you’re reading, in fact, is using this method right now. Here are a few examples of post copy we used to draw you in:
- Wait, You’re Not Done Yet: What To Do After You Hit Publish
- 4 Easy (but Necessary) Steps to Take After Publishing a Blog Post
- Awesome, You Published a Blog Post! Now What?
- If You’re Not Taking Action After Publishing a Blog Post, You’re Wasting Your Time
4. Measure Results
So, by now you’ve written a helpful post, you’ve shared it across multiple social channels, and you didn’t annoy anyone by using the exact same headline over and over again. Great work!
Now you can go back and analyze your findings. Most social tools, such as Buffer will show you engagement results, so you can find out which social channels drive the most traffic, what post copy attracted the most readers, and whether certain times of day helped your posts get extra attention.
And finally, what did people say? What were the comments like? Did people find the post helpful?
It takes time and a keen eye, but it’s important to get a solid grasp on your post’s strengths and weaknesses.
Why? Because you get to do it all again next week!