Promote your blogin 60 minutes or less

Jude Mathurine@newmediajude

Promote your blog

• Get the content right• Get your relationships right

The basics

• Select a good blog name and keep it consistent between online channels where possible (http://namechk.com)

• Title, describe and tag your blogs appropriately

• Link your online assets (include links to your other networked profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube account for starters)

Promote your blog

• Create a blog roll of four or five other bloggers whose (related) work you read and admire. – Find these by using blog aggregators like Technorati or

Blogarama– Amplifiers preferable

• Use Pingomatic.com and Google’s BlogSearch to register your RSS feed and blog site with multiple search tools.

• Register on blog search aggregator (Technorati/Blogarama)

Register on blog directories

• Blog aggregators local and international• Technorati• Blogscope• http://www.blogcatalog.com/• http://www.blogarama.com

Add your blog link EVERYWHERE

• Promote in your e-mail signature. Shorten your blog URL if unwieldy via bit.ly with a custom URL

• Bit.ly will help you track clicks from your signature

Add your blog link to your profiles

• LinkedIn• Facebook• Twitter

Promote your blog• Use aggregator like Scoop.it to find new stories• Tag, Tag, Tag your blog• Reward sites that link to you and link yourself to

other sites• Find out who your POWER USERS or amplifiers are• Share content with other websites where possible• Link users to other useful sites (public journalism)• Post more often

Find local bloggers – add to blogroll

• ThoughtLeader Top bloggers• African Blog awards winners

Promote your blog• Join the conversation with meaningful comments not

just: ‘Nice blog’• Respond to users who comment on your blog.• Blogs are SOCIAL MEDIA

Content marketing

• Kind of content• Valence• Write tight (400-600 words)• Don’t waffle• Use your data journalism and writing skills to

stay informed, research your field, offer insight. Stay polemical but INFORMED

Content marketing

• Choose a legible template• Visualise your story but don’t over-embellish with

embedded content. Less is more. • Use writing techniques that involve the reader and

encourage to respond and engage• Reference characters and events in history, philosophy

and popular culture• Blog better by blogging often• Get someone to read your blogs before posting them

Content marketing: Stats

• Use WordPress Stats/Analytics to determine:– Your most popular posts (that drive most traffic) – Posts that drive engagement (comments)

• Assess what factors may have driven traffic and engagement e.g. search engine terms, categories, headlines, image choice, post length, content, valence etc.

• Use this data to plan future blog posts by determining trends in post performance on monthly basis

Content marketing: Stats

Content marketing: headlines

• What’s wrong with these headlines?• On the money: Kicking the can down the road• Video: isiXhosa stories for learning• Finding Grahams’ Town

Content Marketing: headlines

• Rather prefer active tense and short words (Grahamstown mayor elected to office)

• Personalise headlines (Our mayor wins election by landslide)

• DON’T USE ALL CAPITAL LETTERS• Try keep people the topic or subject of your

sentence

Ripenn’s advice

• Make the most of current events: Tie your headline to news and newsmakers

• Break some “rules” of headline writing, like length• Seek to pique the reader’s curiosity• Never underestimate the emotional factor of a

headline• Call the reader to action with direct action words• Make bold claims• Sound like a human, not a robot

• Buzzfeed headline average 57 characters , Upworthy = 52 characters

• Guardian UK uses 5/6 word headlines and longer headlines on content page.

• But longer headlines are also acceptable – see Mail Online

Examples

• Which Old-School Pro Wrestling Legend Are You?

• Is This the Airport of the Future?• Why the Best Social Media Education Might Be

Right Under Your Nose• 6 Things You Need to Know Today• Awesome ways to pass highschool (video)

• Source: Buffer.ly

Content marketing: Ledes

• Ledes vary between 25 & 30 words

• This means like good news intros you need to write it and then return to edit it afterwards.

• Your lede is the main point . Is your main point buried? Is significant detail buried?

• Will a glocal reader know what you are talking about?

• Challenge every word – if there is no purpose in it delete it.

Relationship marketing

• On Facebook mention or tag sources in stories and photographs (they will share or like your comments).

• Add a picture to your Facebook promo update if you don’t have a picture in your blogpost

• Visit source Facebook pages/groups. Message or notify them of a relevant blog post publication but be careful of appearing ‘spammy’

• Use a quote or statistic or interesting fact from your post instead of a summary promotional update.

Which works better

VS

Twitter• Follow and cultivate Twitter contacts in your beat areas.

Use Tweetfind.• Engage with potential amplifiers who may find your post

interesting in your Twitter posts. Find them on Klout.• Retweet other bloggers who you follow on similar who

blog on similar issues• Mention sources (newspapers, bloggers, researchers)

whose work you used in your blog post in your tweet

Twitter

• Cultivate a Twitter list of beat bloggers to follow. Follow other users’ ‘beat’/speciality lists.

• Run and save a search on particular keywords related to your beat blog theme or area of coverage– e.g. ‘near’ grahamstown– crime, grahamstown

Which of these would you click on?• Tweet blog posts with images for more clicks • Users respond to visual content. Stories with good

image thumbnails are 20% more likely to be clicked on.• Which tweet are you more likely to click on – A or B?

A B

Twitter

• Schedule your tweets for optimum delivery• Sign up with Buffer.ly

Community management

• Link/mention other blogs that you read• Quote from other blogs and websites• Mine, shepherd and seed blogs• Link Klout.com to your Twitter account and

your Wordpress account• Comment on similar blogs found via

Technorati, Blogscope etc.