There are 5 things that you should do after you publish a blog post to generate more blog traffic!
For me, coming up with blog posts and content ideas is super easy! I also really enjoy writing posts. I didn’t think that part would come very easy to me, but I’m definitely glad it does! While I am very good at marketing, I do have to be very intentional and strategic about what I do right after I finish writing a post. Check out the 5 things that I do after I finish a post to ensure that each post is successful in driving traffic to my blog!
5 Things You Should Do After You Hit Publish
1. Pin Your Blog Post on Pinterest
Many bloggers consider Pinterest a “social media platform”. I’m guilty of referring to it as one myself. Pinterest, however, is a search engine and a powerful tool to drive traffic to your website. You wouldn’t design a new blog and not submit it to search engines right!? The same thing goes for Pinterest. If you do not submit your blog post to Pinterest right away, you are not controlling your content from the start and you are missing out on some great opportunity to get traffic rolling in faster!
The absolute first step I take every single time we publish a post is to Pin It! I also use Tailwind to schedule another Pin for the same post to one of the Group Boards that I collaborate on. The second pin is scheduled for 3 days after my initial pin. Finally, I submit that Pin to the 4 “All Topic” Tribes that I belong to on Tailwind and any other Tribes that my Pin is applicable to (I’m a part of 8 Tribes total right now – 4 All Topic and 4 Specific Topic). For example, I’m part of a large STEM tribe and I would submit a STEM product review to that Tribe in addition to the All Topic tribes.
Recap Step #1:
1. Pin to Pinterest (remember to have a great vertical graphic that catches the eye and showcases your blog name, use hashtags, and great SEO description)
2. Use Tailwind to schedule another “Pin” to Group Boards 2-3 days later
3. Submit Pin to Tailwind Tribes that are relevant to your blog content
Pinterest Tips:
→ Use a pinnable image! I always include a long vertical pinnable image at the top of my blog posts (736×1102 is what I tend to use). Also, many Tailwind Tribes won’t let you submit images that are too small and why would you want to miss out on some eye-catching marketing opportunity anyway!? Hint: I use Canva to create some amazing images!
→ Whenever you upload an image to your site, ALWAYS add Alt-Text with keywords for the picture and your post and make sure that your Meta Description showcases your focus keyword as well as a great description of the post. When viewers pin from your website, this is where the description comes from.
2. Mix Your Post
Don’t underestimate any social media platforms when you first get started. Look at where your viewers are coming from and then add those channels to your social media game plan. Stumbleupon recently transitioned to a new platform, Mix. For us, we didn’t expect Stumbleupon to be a large driver of traffic and we were totally wrong! Stumbleupon almost outperformed Facebook and Pinterest this last year. The first day I saw it start performing for us, I changed the way I was promoting our material and it resulted in almost double the traffic right from the start. That’s why it is so incredibly important to check your analytics every day. I check ours at least 5 times each day to evaluate how I’m promoting what material since this blog is still in its infancy. To see where your viewers are coming from, check out your Google Analytics. I’m following my Stumbleupon method for submitting content to Mix, but I haven’t seen large results from it yet.
Balance How You Mix
Make sure that you also submit other articles/posts to Mix to avoid being “spammy”. Share the love! The more you share on Mix, the better your links will do! When you submit the site to Mix, you choose the category and post a comment about the blog post.
Recap Step #2:
1. Check your Google Analytics and see where your traffic is coming from. You can do this by logging into your Google Analytics, clicking on Acquisition, then Social, and then Network Referrals.
2. Submit your posts on Mix by following a schedule to gain the most exposure and mix other blogger’s posts too!
Mix Tips:
→ Make sure that you have ALL relevant social media websites available on your page and also on each blog post.
→ When you submit to Mix, you are submitting the link to the page and can choose the category and type a comment that will be attached to it.
→ Make sure that you are mixing and liking other articles/posts from the web because these increase impressions for your own blog posts that you submit.
3. Tweet It
Twitter is probably the hardest step for me because there is so much potential on Twitter. I’m also not the most regimented here. Always create a link (I use Bit.ly) for your Twitter in order to use your character limit for all the hashtagging you can!
For Twitter, I tweet on the day that I publish first with an individual Twitter image (we use Canva for this too), description and trending/relevant hashtags. I tend to publish posts in the morning, so I tweet another tweet directly from the post page in the afternoon or about 5hrs later. Then, we use Hootsuite to schedule posts for 1 week out, 2 weeks out, and 4 weeks out.
1 Week Out = First Post with a different image (both include a great description and relevant/trending hashtags!)
2 Weeks Out = Second Post from a Twitter link on the blog post (both include a great description and relevant/trending hashtags!)
4 Weeks Out = First Post with a different image (both include a great description and relevant/trending hashtags!)
Recap Step #3:
1. Create a Bit.ly link
2. Create a Twitter-worthy image (1200×600) and write an awesome description with some trending hashtags!
3. Tweet your first tweet on the day that you publish and then tweet again about 5hrs later.
4. Tweet once a week for the next 2 weeks and 1 final tweet 1 month from posting- You can schedule all of this on the very same day that you post using Hootsuite!
Twitter Tips:
→ Make sure that you have ALL relevant social media websites available on your page and also on each blog post.
→ Tweet 2X on the day you publish. 1st time with a Twitter-specific image and 2nd time with a tweet directly from the Twitter link on your blog post.
→ Use Hootsuite or another scheduling service to schedule Tweet 1 and Tweet 2 for 1 week later and 2 weeks later, respectively. On the third week after posting, schedule your very first Twitter post again!
→ Bonus tip: see what post performs best by looking at Twitter analytics! Was your Twitter-specific image more impactful than your direct Twitter link from your blog post? If it wasn’t, get more creative with your graphics and see what your audience responds to!
4. Post to Instagram
We’ve seen great traffic from Instagram over the last two weeks and that’s because we changed how we were using the social media platform just slightly. We’ve also doubled our following in that time too, which is pretty neat to see! Instagram can be tricky though. You want to make sure that you are absolutely sticking to the 80/20 rule for promoting your content and engaging with your audience. I’m always very careful about not being too pushy on this platform because it should be focused more on the connection and interaction with your audience. Don’t oversell here or you will end up losing followers. The audience that visits our website from Instagram spends almost 2X the amount of time on our blog and reads 5 more pages (9 pages on average/session) than viewers who come from other networks (4 pages on average/session). This means that this audience is much more engaged and feeling connected to us than other networks.
On the day of publishing, I schedule an image from the post and utilize Tailwind for Instagram to identify great hashtags to use. I am brand new at using Tailwind for Instagram, but it’s recommendations have helped our traffic skyrocket over these last two weeks. I also schedule a quick tip, related article, or product promotion (when I can find it) for up to 7 days later! It’s pretty cool when products go on sale that we review and it helps drive affiliate links too!
Recap Step #4:
1. Create a Bit.ly link
2. Be careful to follow the 80/20 rule for posting on social media — don’t just sell to your audience
3. Use Tailwind to post a picture from the blog post and be sure to use Tailwind’s awesome hashtag tool!
4. Schedule an additional post for up to a week later with another form of shareable content like a question, quote, related media, article, promotion, etc.
Instagram Tips:
→ Make sure that you have ALL relevant social media websites available on your page and also on each blog post.
→ Make a specific Bit.ly link to track performance of each post
→ Use Tailwind to post a picture from the blog post with Tailwind’s awesome hashtag tool!
→ Use Tailwind to schedule a post with another Instagram specific picture relevant to either the question, quote, media or promotion that you are sharing. Schedule the post for up to 7 days out depending on the timing of promotions (if applicable).
→ Bonus tip: see what post performs best by looking at Bit.ly analytics! Was your 2nd post more impactful than the photo from your blog post? Try different content to engage with viewers. For example, promotions, events, freebies, articles, questions and other shareable content can help click-through traffic to your blog (remember to keep it related to your original post though!!)
5. Share on Facebook
I use two different methods for sharing on Facebook, sharing on Facebook Group threads and sharing on our Facebook page.
Facebook Groups Promo Threads
I’m a part of several Facebook groups of bloggers. Each day, different groups have different promotion threads that let me share the blog posts which means we get some free promotion for our latest work. The benefit to these groups is that there are a ton of bloggers that have been doing this a lot longer than me that are seeing and sharing our content, which is promoting our blog to a very large audience for FREE! This helps us build an audience, network with other bloggers, and identify things that are working and not working on our posts.
Share on Your Facebook Page!
This is also another platform that I try to be very careful on. I don’t want to just bombard our audience with a ton of promotion for blog posts and nothing else. To balance, we have to make sure that we are interacting with all commenters on all posts! For Facebook, I share the blog post on the day that it is published. Sometimes I wait until the following day to make sure we post when our audience is online. We haven’t evolved our Facebook strategy just yet, but it will include the following:
- First Post – post on day blog is published or the following day during high audience engagement window
- Second Post – 1 week later with different image and different description or other related shareable content
- Third Post – 1 month later – post original post with link and blog post
Recap Step #5:
1. Join some Facebook Groups
2. Be careful to follow the 80/20 rule for posting on social media — don’t just sell to your audience
3. Follow a schedule of posting to Facebook and know when your audience is active and online
4. Post 1 post after publishing, another post 1 week later with another form of shareable content, and re-post original post 1 month later.
Facebook Tips:
→ Make sure that you have ALL relevant social media websites available on your page and also on each blog post.
→ Engage with your audience, respond to comments and questions
→ Build up a network of bloggers and learn from them by asking questions and seeing how they post and when they post.
What do you think? Easy to implement and drive some awesome traffic? What social media platforms do you rely on?
Steaming Boards
Tuesday 23rd of October 2018
Great information!
aimz18
Sunday 28th of January 2018
I always forget to pin it!!!