Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

Is Your Blog Going Cold on the Back Burner?

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Many business owners find it challenging to make blogging a priority, then feel frustrated when their haphazard efforts don’t produce results. In a post originally shared at 12 Most (that site is now closed), I offer some solutions.

Some of these ideas may challenge your ordinary routines, but isn’t that the point? What you’re doing now isn’t leaving any space for this important marketing task. If it’s going to work for you, blogging needs to find its way up to your front burner.

© Chepko Danil - Fotolia.com
© Chepko Danil – Fotolia.com

12 Most Tenacious Ways to Keep Blogging on the Front Burner

https://www.contentmasteryguide.com/2016/06/keep-blogging-front-burner.html

 

Blogging Is Not a Sprint But a Marathon

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Warning: This interview with successful business blogger Leanne Hoagland-Smith may contain some things you don’t want to hear. For example, she gets up at 4:30 a.m. in order to fit in her blogging and other administrative work.

You also may not want to hear that while some results happened immediately (you’ll see some impressive traffic numbers), others came over time. In fact it took some clients months or even a year to make contact after reading the blog for awhile.

If you do want to grow your business and improve your online marketing, you’ll read the post anyway. The bottom line is that Leanne makes time for blogging and keeps doing it consistently because it’s working for her! Click the link below to read this guest post at SteamFeed.

Blogging is like running a marathon
© dejangasparin

Blogging Success Tips From a Leading Sales Expert

http://www.steamfeed.com/blogging-success-tips-leading-sales-expert/

No Time to Blog for Your Business?

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If you want to receive all of my latest posts by email, click here to subscribe to the weekly Blogging Tips newsletter.

“Not enough time” is one of the most common reasons I hear from business owners who abandon their blogs or refuse to start blogging in the first place.

My blog posts, workshops and presentations are all devoted to making blogging easier, but the best blogging tips in the world won’t help if you don’t take the time to apply them.

Let’s say you invest in a blogging plan for your business, or do the work to create your own blogging plan. You’ve been listening for ideas and have several blog post outlines all ready to be developed.

What next? Cobwebs (gathering in the corners of your ghost town blog) and crickets (no attention from prospective customers), unless you go one step further and actually implement the plan, blog consistently and promote your blog posts.

This guest post for 12 Most is all about time and making the most of it to achieve business blogging success.

12 Most Fierce Ways to Protect Your Blogging Time

Fierce lion roaring
© emiliau – Fotolia.com

[Update June 21, 2016: The 12 Most site has been taken down, so I’ve republished this post here at Content Mastery Guide: 12 Most Fierce Ways to Protect Your Blogging Time.]

Start Blogging, Keep Blogging, Attract the Right Customers

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If you want to receive all of my latest posts by email, click here to subscribe to the weekly Blogging Tips newsletter.

How to Create a Business Blogging Plan

blogging plan
© Petr Ciz – Fotolia.com

Whether you’re starting from scratch or planning ahead for the quarter or year, these six steps break down the blog planning process to include every essential element. Put them together and you’ll have a comprehensive plan that sets up your business blog for maximum success.

This is my first guest post for Social Media Examiner.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/business-blogging-plan/

5 Ways to Avoid the Dreaded Blog Fade

Abandoned blog sends wrong message about business
© Pitamaha – Fotolia.com

Blogging is an effective way to show prospective customers how your company’s expertise can help them, but it only works if you do it consistently. These five these tips will help keep up your momentum long enough to see some results.

http://www.steamfeed.com/5-ways-avoid-dreaded-blog-fade/

Blog of Attraction: How blogging helps you attract your best clients and filter out the wrong clients

blogging is a magnet to attract customers

When we’re attracted to someone, we tend to value and trust what they say. We like who they are and may want to become our own version of that. Plus we like the results we’ve gotten when we’ve applied their advice and suggestions, or learned from their experiences.

When you achieve that level of attraction with your readers, they will want more of you. That’s the power of blogging.

You can view a PDF version of my article in choice, the magazine of professional coaching, by following this link to my LinkedIn profile:

http://lnkd.in/dHH96i2

How to Streamline Your Blog Post Publishing and Promotion Tasks

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One of the best things I’ve done to streamline the publishing and promotion process is to insert a template at the bottom of my blog post drafts in Word. I do this for my own posts at Content Mastery Guide, the guest posts I write for other sites, and the posts I write and manage for clients.

Template for blog promotion text

For my own posts, the template looks like this:

Blog publishing and promotion checklist

I also include some reminders about formatting issues with my WordPress template (e.g., I need to save a second version of my photo in a different size as the “Featured Image” so it displays correctly in my weekly blogging tips newsletter).

With this template in place, the rest of my publishing and promotion tasks go much more smoothly. Plus, with these details at the bottom of every blog post draft, I can easily outsource the blog publishing and promotion tasks to my team for my monthly blog writing clients.

Checklist for blog post publishing and promotion

business blogging checklist for publishing and promotion
© Dmitry – Fotolia.com

I wrote the following set of instructions for a blogging consultation client based on what I was doing at the time. This was before I started using Buffer, but I still approach the process in much the same way.

In MS Word:

  • Create a blog post outline document as I’m planning the post
  • Re-save the outline as a new document as I draft the post so I preserve my original list of links and resources
  • Proofread and finalize the blog post text
  • Complete promotional text as per template

At Fotolia:

At Pic Monkey [Update Mar 26, 2018 – Now using Pixl]:

  • Re-size photo as needed and set file name (include a keyword where possible)
  • Create second version of picture with text (e.g., a quote or headline from the post, my website URL, photo copyright information)

In blog/website administrative dashboard (WordPress):

On Facebook (immediately after publishing):

  • Click “add photo” and upload the blog post photo
  • Paste the Facebook message from the Word doc template
  • At the end of the message, paste the permanent link (permalink) of the blog post
  • After the link, add one or two relevant hashtags, e.g., #blogging #smallbiz #marketing
  • If this is a guest post, or reference to another expert, link to that person’s Facebook page by typing @ and the name, then clicking the page from the options that drop down
  • Publish update

UPDATE (November 9, 2014): Facebook is now giving more visibility to posts that contain links with thumbnail images, versus those with uploaded photos (they consider that “click-baiting“). So it’s best to put your link directly into the status update box so just the small thumbnail image is displayed.

On Twitter.com (immediately after publishing):

  • Click “add photo” and upload the blog post photo
  • Paste the text of the best tweet from Word doc template
  • At the end of the message, paste the permanent link (permalink) of the blog post
  • After the link, add one or two relevant hashtags, e.g., #blogging #smallbiz #marketing
  • If this is a guest post, or reference to another expert, add the person’s Twitter name
  • Publish tweet

On LinkedIn (immediately after publishing):

  • Paste the LinkedIn message from the Word doc template
  • At the end of the message, paste the permanent link (permalink) of the blog post
  • If this is a guest post, or reference to another expert, link to that person’s LinkedIn profile and/or company page by typing the name, then clicking the page or name from the options that drop down)
  • Share posts the same way in LinkedIn groups by starting a new discussion, if appropriate to the culture of that particular group
  • Share posts the same way to your company page (but you cannot link to another profile or page from a company page update)

In HootSuite or Buffer:

  • Schedule additional tweets for later in the week

In email broadcast system (if not using an automated RSS-to-email service):

  • Open HTML template or create copy of previous broadcast
  • Paste in text of blog post excerpt along with the permalink so people can read the entire post
  • Add blog post photo
  • (Optional) Add additional newsletter content, e.g., personal note, upcoming events, featured products/services
  • Send or schedule broadcast

It’s taken many years to streamline my process to this level, and I love how much more efficient it makes me! Do you use any templates or checklists for managing your blogging tasks?