by tradesmeninsights | Aug 5, 2014 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
We all work hard on developing content for your blog, but what happens after it’s posted? Yes, you optimize it for search and you use various social sites to promote it, but is that all?
Repurposing is taking an existing piece of content and communicating your ideas in different ways using different media (i.e. SlideShare, infographic, podcasts) to deliver the same message from several different angles. Not all content should be repurposed though. You should stick to your core message that’s not time sensitive.
I recently read a post by Darren Rowse, How to Repurpose Your Content and Why You Should Do It that gave great insights on not only Why but How to do it effectively.
Here are some of his key takeaways on doing it correctly:
- Choose your content carefully – make sure it’s central to your key messaging and is not time sensitive.
- Think carefully about the medium – some people like to read, others would prefer a podcast and yet others are drawn to infographics.
- Use a different angle – while the subject matter would be the same, there are several ways you can approach the subject.
Some other suggestions from Darren are:
- Spread out the repurposed content over a period of time to give the reader time to absorb it.
- Repurpose as you write original content.
- Utilize your archives. Check out what has had good response in the past and work with that.
- Keep it visual.
- Make sure to cross link back to original content.
by tradesmeninsights | Sep 12, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
We’re all overworked and underpaid. Time for most of us is a resource we don’t seem to have enough of, and for those of us who write a blog, it sometimes seems even more scarce.
Time, or the lack thereof, can influence the quality of not only content, but also continuity of your post. We need to remember the reason why we’re doing a blog in the first place – generating exposure, thought leadership and potential customers.
I recently read an article by Brian Milne in ProBlogger that gives you some suggestions on finding time to write. Here are some highlights:
- Get up early – I find this is a great way to start the day. It’s quiet and your mind is clear.
- Write at lunch – Brown bag it and get away from the office (and all the distractions) and write a post on a nearby park bench.
- Stay up late – This one doesn’t work for me as I’m not a night owl, but I know plenty of people who do their best work in the dark (no pun intended).
- Utilize apps and shortcuts – use your mobile device to snap a photo and upload images. Take advantage of WordPress features to streamline posting.
- Get some help – find others within the organization to write or go out and hire outside writers.
- Accept guest posts – I’m sure there are like-minded people out there that you admire and respect that can give a different perspective on issues that are near and dear to you.
What are you doing to find time?
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 22, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing
I know we all know “CONTENT IS KING” and we focus on putting out good stuff. But we should be just as focused on building the list to whom we’ll be sending all this valuable info.
It’s a fact that if you have an engaged database of subscribers, you have a captive audience not only for them to read, but to share. I recently read a post on problogger.net by James Penn entitled, 10 Ways to Get More Email Subscribers For Your Blog that I thought brought home some key points.
Among them are:
- Use multiple opt-in forms – have 3-4 in your newsletter template. The more you have, the better the chances of them signing up.
- Offer a freebie for signing up – give them a report, industry trends or white paper for signing up.
- Use your most popular posts – they will continue to bring in traffic.
- Create special reports on industry issues – use already existing content to create.
- Ask readers to join your email list – what better way to get people on board
These are some great tips. What are you doing to increase your email lists?
by tradesmeninsights | Feb 9, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Let’s face it, the reason we all blog is because we want to share something that is relevant and might be useful in our readers’ day-to-day business. But how do we motivate you to share my info with your peer group?
I recently read an interesting post on problogger.net by Dan Zarrella, What Motivates Readers to Share. He’s done studies on what people share and why. He even has his “Top 10 Lists” of both the best and worst words to share or not to on Twitter and Facebook. Some pretty interesting stuff. He’s written a book, Zarrella’s Hierarchy on Contagiousness if you’re interested in learning more.
We obviously need to get you exposed to my content,whether it’s following me on Twitter, liking me on Facebook, be LinkedIn with me or having you subscribe to my RSS feed. Then I have to be sure you are aware of the content and read it. Lastly, how can we motivate you to share my thoughts with your peer groups?
All three of these elements are important if your blog is to be successful. It really becomes a numbers game. The more followers you have, the more sharing they are apt to do. So what do you have to do to insure success?
- Increase followers, fans, friends on your social networks as well as increasing your email list.
- Create good content that’s worth sharing.
- Include a powerful call to action.
The key is if you have good content and are listening to your audience, you will get your messages shared and that’s what it’s really all about. So we all have to do our homework to insure our messages are getting out.
What are you doing?
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 19, 2012 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Your blog should be the centerpiece of your marketing efforts, so it stands to reason that you need to promote as much traffic to it as you can. I recently read a post on Problogger from Blogstash that outlined 65 ways to improve your traffic.
So here are some of my favorite ones:
- Interview an expert or industry leader in your field and then post it on your blog.
- Guest posts, there are certainly others in your space. Talk to them and see if they would be willing to do a post. Who knows, they may ask you to reciprocate.
- Find interesting posts others have done and write a post about it and link to their site.
- Go to YouTube and find relevant videos and make comments on with a link back to your blog.
- Build a Wiki page for your blog using a non-promoting post.
- Write list posts like this one. People seem to like them.
- Publish your posts on Wikipedia.
- Make sure you post on your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn) a brief description and link to your site.
I have found that Twitter and the groups that I belong to on LinkedIn generate more traffic to my blog than any other source.
A suggestion would be to take a few of these, implement them and see how they work for you.
