content plan

How to get more out of your blog content

How to get more out of your blog content.png

One of the most frustrating things about writing a long piece of content is feeling like only a few people saw it and hours of your time writing had almost no impact.

There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to blog content that will help you feel like it was well worth the time invested. It’s as simple as making sure that nobody (including you!) thinks of your blog post as a “one and done” piece of content.

1)   SEO juice

Quality content on your website will help you rank higher in search engines (otherwise known as search engine optimization or SEO). Even if you just think of SEO as being there to help you rank higher in search - that alone is still not a bad reason to create good content for your website (some businesses get most of their leads through search!).

Every time you create new content, your website is crawled by the search engine bots. So, when you create new blogs posts, make sure you’re using the kinds of words you want to be found for. You should also keep your blog posts to a minimum of 300-500 words for them to be considered quality, and whenever possible, link to other pieces of your content within your site and try to get other people to link to your content from their web sites.

2)   You’re giving people a reason to visit

Without new blog posts, there isn’t much of a reason for people to keep coming back to your website. How many times can you promote your ‘About’ and ‘Sales’ pages and expect people to take the time to come and visit again?

By consistently creating new content that you know is of interest to your audience, you have an opportunity to entice them to return and make them feel like they’re getting value out of what they’re reading.

Once you have posted new content, make sure you tell your audience you created the content. Post it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and on Pinterest. Also send an email to your mailing list letting them know you created the new content.

If you don’t tell people you created new content, they won’t know to go and look – so, promote, promote, promote!

I once heard you should spend as much time promoting a post as you spend writing it, if not more. Keeping that in mind will help you figure out just how much effort you have to put into getting people to see it for you to feel like it was worth writing.

A few other tips for promoting:

  • Share it multiple times – on Twitter you can share it 5-6 times over 48 hours easily. On Facebook you can share it again 24-48 hours later.

  • If you’re worried about seeming repetitive, use ICYMI. It stands for “In case you missed it” and recognizes you’ve posted it before, but that you know not everyone will have seen it.

This next piece is really critical:

3)   Don’t forget about it.

Once you’ve promoted the content, plan to share it again over time. Not all of your content may be evergreen, but if it is it, plan to share it again in two weeks, six weeks and nine weeks later. You may even want to schedule it to share again in those time frames while you’re posting it the first time. It will save you time and make sure you don’t forget to keep re-sharing it.

4)   Reuse pieces

Don’t think of your blog post as just a blog post. Take pieces of it and do different things with it.

Reuse it as a script for a short video, take quotes out and share as tips on Twitter or create visuals and share on Instagram. 

Creating great content can be time consuming, but if you make that time well worth the investment then you will see results - results that make it easier to keep doing. By making sure the content is being properly promoted and shared on a regular basis, you’re going to see far more results with one piece of content than you did before.

Spend some time thinking about the content you’ve written in the past – how can you apply these things to it now?

Create Facebook content by theming your days

contentcreation

We talk a lot about the value of having a plan when you’re creating content. Today I thought I’d talk a bit about how having themes for every day of the week for your Facebook page (or any of your social networks) can help you come up with content quickly.

What do you want people to know about?

First come up with some messages that you want to share with your audience: 

  • Do you want people to know that using your product will save them time?
  • Do you want people to know that you cook amazing meals that are healthy? 
  • Do you want people to know that you’re an expert in renovating kitchens? 
  • Do you want people to know that hiring a realtor is better than trying to sell their house on their own?

Create a list of broad categories of things you want people to know about you – just 2 or 3. This is going to help make sure that what you’re sharing is helping you achieve your goals.

Assign a certain kind of content to each day of the week.

For example:

Sundays you can share an article from someone else. There are all kinds of people writing incredible content that back up what you want people to know – that healthy food made from scratch is good for you, that exercising every day is important, that selling your home independently won’t always save you money. Spend a bit of time right now finding four articles that talk about something you believe in that would be of interest to your audience.

Mondays you can share a tip. Spend some time writing down four tips that would help your audience i.e., cooking tips, marketing tips, productivity tips, etc. 

Tuesdays you’re going to feature something from your website.  Go and browse around your website - what are some interesting things you want people to know about? Is there a page that tells me why I should buy something? Is there a testimonials page? Is there a free tool I could download? Find four interesting things and save the URLs for those pages and explain why people should be interested in having a look.

Wednesday ask a question from your community. Maybe it’s something about their favourite products or tools, or maybe it’s something about how they overcome certain challenges. Jot down four.

Thursday we’re going to play with Throwback Thursday (#TBT). Do you have old photos in the archives? Pull up four and quickly tell the story about a great event, about your first year in business, or about how much technology has changed since you opened.

Friday share an article from your website. You probably have all kinds of great content on your blog. Go find it and share it again – it’s still relevant. Pick four now.

Saturday we’ll go with something lighter because people like light on the weekend. Are there any jokes or comics you could share? I’m a fan of going to Pinterest and typing in key words to find stuff like that to share. Find four of these.

Do you see what I did there? If you find four of each of those things, you have a month of Facebook content already written and ready to schedule. It will take an hour or two most likely, but once completed you will have great content ready for the entire month!

Leave me a comment and tell me what your daily categories would be and if you think this would work well for you and your content creation! 

Proofread that post, proof it again and proof once more

I recently witnessed a status update from a business page on Facebook that misspelled a key term for its industry

What did they use?

“Loosing”

What did they mean?

“Losing”

Think about any industry or business that talks about losing anything - weight, eye sight, hearing, keys, gadgets, etc.

There are so many businesses that may need to use “losing” as part of their messaging and in some cases the competition is going to be fierce.

Losing engagement

After seeing that status update, I can’t remember anything about it other than the misspelled word and I wasn’t the only one. The first and only comment on the post is from someone pointing out the error (no, it was not me). That lone comment has one like. There is no other engagement on that post.

Many businesses may not feel that proofing a short status update on Facebook or Twitter is worth their time, but think about the impression on the audience when key terminology is misspelled:

  • Does the misspelling inadvertently change the meaning? 
  • Is a competitor making that or similar errors?
  • Will the mistake(s) distract from the overall message? 

The best way to avoid this type of situation is to prepare content in advance.

You want to post to Facebook every day? (Yay! You should.)

Plan it out 

Spend two hours coming up with the content for a month.

Proofread that post: Then set it aside for a day and go back to read in detail what you’ve written.

Proof it again: If you can, ask someone else to review it.

Proof once more: Then, when you actually post the content, read through one more time. Out loud. 

Your message matters - don’t let it get lost behind an avoidable error!