Blog Posting your latest blog is only the beginning. Every week (or two weeks or month) you put in the amazing effort of creating, and sharing with the world, your thoughts, research or observations on an industry topic. It’s no small feat. However, many small businesses end this effort at posting. Perhaps they share it on their social media platforms but then it’s on to the next. This is where old blog posts go to die.

The following is a potential lifecycle of your blog post and how you can help achieve its biggest potential.

Stage 1:  Blog Posting

Let’s assume that you’ve done your research on keywords for which you want to rank. You have an attractive format with headings and subheadings, maybe a bulleted list. You linked to another internal page with related insights (that don’t compete). You’ve selected a beautiful and eye-catching image to accompany the post and it’s on brand (well done!) The topic is of interest to your target audience and is sure to solicit opens. And you’ve even included a call-to-action with an opt-in (form to submit in exchange for a content download or purchase).

So, you hit ‘publish’ and assume people will flock to read your words of wisdom. Hmmm. You’ve garnered a few random clicks but nowhere near what you wanted. On to the next stage.

Stage 2: Blog Promoting

You send it to your email list. You share your post on all your social media channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.) In fact, you share the same post a few times in different ways. You change the focus, the caption, even the image to catch the eyes of different prospects. 

• Select a quote or line in the post to highlight
• Focus on a benefit of following the post’s advice
• Talk about where you go the idea to write about this topic

And of course you ask your network to share it or like it or comment on it.

You record accompanying audio and video snips and share them on specific social channels. This gives you more content to promote without feeling repetitive (check out https://www.headliner.app/). You know that video has a higher engagement rate so the effort is worth it.

Maybe you ask a friend to ask a question on a forum (e.g. Quora) and it happens that this post answers it perfectly. Go figure. 

You spend some time on others’ posts to encourage positive reciprocation but of course you do this regularly on all channels so by now you have a tight network of people who support you. 

You might even share on forums but only rarely and only if you really know what you’re doing. This can have backlash if you appear overly salesy or pushy.

Your post is seeing good attention and traffic – nice work!

Stage 3: Supporting Your Posts

You then use this post as collateral in your email list and DMs. After all, it’s chocked full of insights and valuable tips. The email becomes a link from other blog posts where they can get more insights around a specific topic. 

You boil down the essence of what you’ve written and turn it into an infographic or downloadable ‘cheat sheet’. This can be offered as a stand alone with a link back to the blog. Or you can turn it into a social media post and share it on your network (may work well on Pinterest). 

You even use the frame of this post and rewrite it as a guest post! Clever you!

Stage 4: Attracting New Traffic

Based on your initial research around keywords and their placement in your post, you are now starting to attract longtail organic search traffic. This will attract new visitors for years to come.

Now that you have a post that ranks well for this keyword, you will continue to tweak or update this post instead of writing new posts for this keyword and competing against your own posts. Smart! 

Psst! Download your own copy of this infographic here to remind you how to get the most from each blog post.