When last we wrote about how we promote our blog articles and how you could as well, we mentioned there was software to make the process easier; there were additional spots on the web where you could also post them. This article will hopefully encourage you to make better use of the Internet in the promotion of your articles and information to share, and if not, to at least convince you to contact an inbound marketing agency (like Zen Marketing) to help get you started. It does not all have to be done at once, and the workload can even be shared by you and the agency you choose. There is no fixed formula for marketing your business through blogging; it’s just proven that those businesses that blog enjoy more leads than those that choose to avoid article and blog writing.
By now you should have set up numerous platform accounts; place where you can post your content offerings. Review them routinely and identify which ones perform best, then next best, and so on. By understanding your first tier versus the others, when time is extremely tight and you may only be able to post to a few, you will know which sites to use for a given topic or medium. Remember, blog postings don’t always have to be the written word; there’s video, surveys, audio clips, webinars and so on. Analyze how each topic performs on which outlets regularly and get the most results from each piece.
Once you have performed the sharing steps outlined in the first article, you might want to take a look at setting up and using a micro blog on the LiveJournal platform, as well as Blogger. You may not have very many readers that subscribe to these in addition to other sites for information, but they take only a few minutes to post to each day, and the chances are good that you will find new readers at each of these platforms. Follow the terms of use because you may be required to post information in a variety of formats and topics, but it should not be difficult whatsoever. Be diverse; perform a variety of queries and teasers to interact with your audience. You can perform surveys and contests in addition to the posting of your routine articles.
Curation Strategies
A great place to curate other’s work to support your own is through using Scoop.it. This online magazine platform is the perfect place for your own articles to be interspersed with the articles of others. This is known as content curation. By setting up an account you can immediately begin gathering valuable content from across the web pertaining to the niche your business exploits, as well as information you find that can make your readers’ lives better. If you gather information, share it with your Facebook, Twitter and other social network communities, and when you have an article to include of your own making, you may want to share it within the cluster or interjected on multiple occasions throughout the day or evening. Not everyone is online at the same time, so spread out your own work. Tumblr and Buffer are a couple places which share your work from the Scoop.it platform.
News related service platforms like Newsvine and SlashDot are pretty fussy about posting one’s own content, but if you learn the rules and work within them, your newsworthy postings could garner attention and new readership. These sites are finicky but can be useful.
Press releases are some of the most valuable postings you can create and distribute, but often will cost cold hard cash to distribute them. PRWeb is a great place from which to launch your press releases, and will distribute to more than 200,000 information distribution outlets.
JustRetweet.com is a site where tweets can be posted for others to re-tweet. This is a points program, where you earn points by re-tweeting others’ information and vice-versa.
If by this time you are following all of these tips and really working your content to its fullest effect, then you may want to check on a site called Triberr. Triberr is a site that will typically pick up a new RSS feed, so your net content may show up there on its own. If not, you can manually insert it into the feed, and it should show up some time later in the day. This is also a great place to find other contributions of authors for you to scoop, curate or on which to comment.
Workflow Automation
Previously in the article, we spoke of software programs that can make the process more streamlined and functional. Here are a few.
HootSuite is a platform with a modest price with which you can post to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus accounts concurrently. HootSuite works very well at posting to these accounts, and for $10 a month is well worth it in time savings.
Vocus is a terrific platform (a bit pricier, however) that not only helps with concurrent postings to social media platforms, it has a public relations aspect that can generate publishing on more than 200,000 news medial distribution outlets including UPI and AP. If you are a B2B company with a lot of news to share in the form of press releases, this is your best outlet despite the cost. Additionally, auto responder email platform iContact is part of the package, so there may be some savings there. Vocus purchased iContact this past year and include the offering in their packages.
Here’s another tactic you should employ once you are using all of the other tips highlighted in this series of articles. Use a platform named BlogPing every day. This platform will notify more than 30 sites that new content has been added. Feedburner and Technorati are just two of the sites that will get the message.
It Requires Work
This thing called inbound marketing can be quite a daunting task, but it can be extremely worthwhile. Not all of our clients utilize every platform uncovered here. We use them, and encourage our clients to make them part of their overall marketing stratagem. You certainly have the ability to undertake such a process, but you don’t have to if you have the right inbound marketing agency working for you.
At Zen Marketing, we are ready and willing to discuss your marketing strategies and tactics to help you grow your business. We can create a customized package of services that are not only affordable, but achieve the results for which you are looking. It doesn’t matter if you are B2B or B2C, or a combination of both. Many of our clients focus on both business to business and consumer, and these tactics work well for them. It goes without saying they work well for us at Zen.
Feel free to contact us personally for a no-obligation review of your current marketing efforts and a proposal for how we can help you achieve your lead generation goals. We’re flexible. We can do it all or just a small portion of the work; you decide how involved you wish to be. We’d be happy to work with you on a level in which you feel comfortable.
Don’t hesitate to call with any questions you might have regarding any of these platforms and how they can help your business today.
