You know you should blog right?

You know you should shoot videos and post them to YouTube right?

Oh ya!  Don’t forget to post on social media….all the time… yes every day.

Oh and you know you have to be consistent!

BUT what you do NOT know is….

Who the heck is reading your content anyway???

THE BREAKDOWN

Here is what you’ll learn inside this post…

• The importance of breaking up your blog into powerful segments
• How social promotion works
• Why we do long-term scheduling
• How to choose winning visuals
• And SO MUCH MORE!

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So you’ve posted a kick-ass piece of content on your website, congrats!

Now what?

Well, we have to make sure it’s not just your best friend, parents and your dog reading or watching!

As information marketers (yes, this is what you are but I wouldn’t start introducing myself as this, doesn’t sound sexy) you need to actively get your content out there.

The goal is to leverage social media and get as many people to place their eyeballs on your awesome content.

Eyeballs?

Yes, this is called an impression that means views, readers, and audience…. any way someone is consuming your content or your brand. We want impressions, lots of them (more on this in upcoming modules PR & Media).

Similar to how your lead magnet URL needs active promotion, so does your content.

 

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STOP!

Before we move on… take a moment to check back in with your big picture and have a little pep talk….

So, why do you want all these impressions on your content?

Why do you want people reading your blogs? Because you want to work for free???? HECK NO!

Well….yes you do want to help people and provide content that improves their quality of life and makes them better. BUT, I’m talking business hat on…..

 #1 LEADS: We want leads! We want green people into our business system and we want to build a relationship with them so that they get to know, like and trust us and we would like to (kindly) sell them something.

We want to show them that we know what we are talking about (our blog will help) and once they trust us enough they will give us their email via the opt in opportunities we have optimized our blogs with.

One more time…we want e-mails!

#2 NURTURE: As an expert, all your awesomeness is not assumed. Its likely stuck in your head and in your heart. Sure your personal network may know how good you are… but this does not help us. We are thinking bigger.

You need to get this out and into some form of content. This will build a relationship with your audience. You need to constantly be top of mind…you can’t disappear. Your key messages, your brand, your face, your personality…in front of them all the time via social media (directing back to your blog)…. via emails (directing back to your blog) and any other method of getting your message known.

 

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 THE STEPS TO PROMOTING YOUR CONTENT

 

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CREATE “SNIPPITS” AS YOU BREAK OF PIECES FROM YOUR CONTENT

Break off part of your blog post into powerful sections.

When your blog content is complete, all the social media content you need for this is right in front of you. No need to create new content or search for things to say on social media…you’ve already done all that!

You can splinter off an image with a statistic, or headline, a quote, a particular strong sentence or paragraph… there are no rules. This is your show!

On the next page are examples of how I would break of content from one of my blogs and then use these nuggets to post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and wherever else ….

The link at the end of this snippet is a link which points back to the blog post and has been shortened in Bit.ly (more on this in the upcoming steps).

THE VISUALS

 

Make it pretty!

I know that many of you have been spending far too many hours in Canva playing around with making things pretty…but visual content is necessary when it comes to posting on social media.

First, a great feature image is super important.

A feature image is the image that goes at the top of your blog post.

If you are in WordPress, here is where you upload your feature image…

BUT, just having one feature image isn’t enough.

It’s easy enough to create quotes and fun things on a template you have in Canva (or anywhere else) and re-use it for consistent branding or screenshots … anything visual adds to the experience.

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  SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTING

It's time to share on social media!

Next step is to jump over to Bit.ly and shorten the URL so that you have a speedier method for regularly tracking performance based on clicks and sharing.

My Bit.ly Process….

STEP 1

Copy the URL of the post.

 

STEP 2

Paste the URL into Bit.ly and get the new URL

So this is now the LINK you are using to direct people to your blog…

  

 

NEXT STEPS….

 

Broadcast to Facebook

I use Hootsuite Pro as my social media management system so that my team and I can be logged in at the same time as we monitor throughout the day.

Create your Facebook copy based on the benefits and point of your content. Include something about the hook of your content (the main pain points you are providing solutions to in this particular piece).

If you’re usually fun and address them with banter, appeal to them with your content the same way.

If you’re usually more serious and to the point, don’t waste their time being wordy — give them the goods straight up.

During your first broadcast of this content, utilize the feature image that you used with your blog.

How I do this in Hootsuite…

• Grab a snippet for the post.
• Paste the Bit.ly link.
• Upload the feature image.
• Click Send Now.

Broadcasting on Twitter

On the day of publishing your post, create 4 tweets that will be published every couple hours….

• Headline >> LINK
• Quote >> LINK
• Question the post answers >> LINKS
• A one liner (“Did you knows” work well) >>LINK

NOTE: Because Twitter only allows the 140 characters; I do treat Twitter and Facebook as 2 separate entities meaning.. yepp… creating separate swipes (UGH)

Broadcasting on  LinkedIn

The beauty of LinkedIn is that posts shared on LinkedIn have a habit of continuing to be shared long after they’re posted. When you share with your connections, you’re sharing with a smaller audience of people that have already indicated they’re interested in your happenings.

And don't forget Instagram! You can even set up your posts ahead of time in one of my fave softwares – later. Check out how I use this awesome platform.

Any other platforms that you like to use?

Yes, share it there too!

You can schedule more posts later that week, just use different images and phase the blurbs differently.

When sharing for a second time, make sure to change copy to remove any “today’s” or “new on the blog” and condense copy to make for a shorter, more direct post.

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TAGGING OTHER BRANDS (IF APPLICABLE)

 When I’m broadcasting a post, I tag people and brands wherever it makes sense.

Do not tag people just to promote yourself (this is a major pet peeve of mine) but if it’s non-promotional and its content then sure tag a brand where it fits.

 

MONITOR YOUR SMM
(SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING) EFFORTS

 

Most of the social media action will occur in the first 48-72 hours.

This is where Bit.ly comes in as it can tell you immediate results including:

• Who’s clicking?
• Where are they clicking?
• Who’s sharing?
• Where are they sharing?
• Which broadcast performed the best?
• Which platform performed the best?

Bit.ly tells us all of that.

During the initial 24-48 hours broadcasting of links, you can use Bit.ly….

• To see how many people are clicking your link from each platform.
• To see what time your post performed best.

 

NOTE ABOUT RE-TWEETING:

Tweets have a short lifespan, once you’ve published them; they’re already being buried by someone else’s content. The perks of re-tweeting someone who shared your content, or replying back to them, is that it puts your content in front of your audience with the added social proof that other people in your audience like the content you’ve been sharing.

LONG TERM SCHEDULING

When you post something on social media.. you have a big spike…lots of attention and love…if feels good and then….

It vanished from the face of the social Earth!

All that work, all that awesome content, all that time…just hidden.

Keep in mind that the majority of your content is not time sensitive and can be of value to people for years and years to come. Both your existing and new audience should still be consuming it as it is evergreen.

That’s why long term-automated distribution (scheduling) is a good idea.

Scheduling your content into a social media management tool lets you keep the same piece alive without having to do anything (after you’ve uploaded it into the library).

I have used www.meetedgar.com for my scheduling and automation across Twitter and LinkedIn. It allows you to make categories, and choose what time content publishes using those categories — the library will randomize itself and post content in rotation so that you’re not bombarding people with the same tweets day after day.

When you’re broadcasting your content, you have everything you need to schedule your content (this is all inside your content!!).

After we’ve loaded our three tweets into Hootsuite the first day my content is published, we take those same splinters (parts of your content that you’ve turned into posts or swipes) and immediately load them into MeetEdgar.

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ONE MORE (IMPORTANT) POINT

Okay, its not really one “more” point as this point has already been covered inside this very reading but it is so very important that it needs to be mentioned again.

You should confidently know how to answer this question…

(I ask)

“WHY ARE WE DOING ALL OF THIS AGAIN”?

(You scream)

LEADS!!!! E-MAILS!!!

The reason I am hammering this home this much is because this is something so many passion-based experts are all too guilty of.

Creating a ton of incredibly valuable content without translating it into any system that will eventually support making a penny.

This is your business. Treat it accordingly.

This far into this program, you understand the business system and you know that you are creating content to build a relationship and to nurture them into your business system as it relates to the phycology of where they are likely at temperature wise (cold, warm or hot).
It's all about running traffic from a source to your Lead Magnet squeeze pages and building your subscriber base.
This is all about driving leads (driving traffic) to your opt in so that the “numbers game” can begin…

Traffic from….

• From your blog posts
• From your social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc)
• From paid sources (Facebook ads, AdWords, Dedicated Email Drops, etc)
• From speaking engagements (Webinars, In-Person events, etc)
• From print, radio, television advertising, etc (media covered in module 7)

… to your Lead Magnet squeeze page.

The more traffic you send to your Lead Magnet squeeze page… the more e-mails you will get.

A note about squeeze page conversions

Remember not everyone who lands on your blog will opt-in and not everyone who lands on your landing page will choose to opt-in. This means you have to make sure you both driving traffic and your landing page is converting.

A typical Lead Magnet squeeze page will convert at 40+%.

That means 40 out of 100 visitors to that squeeze page will convert to a subscriber.

 

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A QUICK NOTE ABOUT SEO

Full disclosure, SEO is not my expertise. I have not relied on it to build my business and sell my programs. You will hear many experts give you different opinions about its effectiveness. As long as I’ve had a online business… the general idea is that “SEO is dead”.

It gets super complicated but here is what I want you to know about SEO…(and you can always use this handy plugin I use called YOAST – check this out).

What is it?

What is the idea behind SEO as it relates to your content?

Weaving some SEO best practices into your content will help make a good impression with Google and move your website up the rankings list.

In basic terms what this means is that you can optimize your content to “rank” for search terms if you use these terms frequently through your content.

For example if you want people to find you when they are searching on Google for tricks to improve their sleeping patterns…

Then you could see if ranking for terms such as “sleep expert”, “how to get better sleep”, “sleep hacks”, “sleep expert”…

What can you do in your business as create your content?

Here are some basic ways in which you can take some extra steps to help your content succeed with search engines.

 

KEYWORDS

Use keywords (naturally): Identify your main keyword for the content, a few synonyms, and a few related keywords. Then make sure you’re actually using them in your content, headers, and page content.

Don’t over-do it. Search engines have been cracking down on content that is “stuffed” with one or two keywords. Write for the reader, but do make sure those important words are present.

 GOOD CONTENT

The strength of a good content marketing strategy is in providing the information and answers that your GREEN audience is looking for. If you create content that your audience is looking for and you are constantly talking about your key messages…then over time you will be found.

 BACKLINKS

Build relationships with industry professionals and other platforms (any website) who will share your content, and provide you a backlink in return. When they link from their site to yours, this is called a backlink and it really helps your search ability as this proves you are legit. If other people are linking to you (especially credible websites with a lot of traffic)…Google sees this and notes that you are someone legit. Google is so freakin’ smart!

 MEDIA

When you post media (video and images) on your blog, you can add descriptive titles and alt text when you upload them to WordPress. Google likes this and looks here to see what this image is all about.