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Hi everyone! Welcome to podcast #55 – all about what you need to do for getting traffic to your blog post after you have published it. There’s more to it that just hitting ‘publish’, so what do you need to do next?
What have Andrew and Heather learnt this week?
Andrew learnt about a new type of Facebook ad called website custom audiences. It lets you track custom audiences by finding people like you or like the audience you are after. You will notice that Facebook ads might pop up in your news-feed from websites you have visited. It also means that you can re-target without going through a third party anymore.
Heather learnt that recently Google has allowed you to schedule hangouts for the future while providing three links; an embed code for your website, a YouTube link and a link for the actual Google+ site. This makes it very easy for people to find you.
Getting Traffic to Your Blog
There are a number of things that you should do once you have published your content. You want people to know your post is there and to come and find it!
1) Use Social Share buttons
You can use these yourself to share your content, plus anyone who comes to your site is able to share your post. Make sure at the very least you have Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn on there, but there are a number of other options too.
2) Networked Blogs in Facebook
List your blog in Networked Blogs to help people discover your posts. You can also set up the app so that any new posts you put up are automatically shared with your newsfeed.
3) Stumble Upon and Digg
These sites (including others such as Tumblr, Reddit and Delicious) let you put your posts on them so that they are available for people to discover. A lot of people use these sites as content curators as they are bookmarking content all the time. (Hint: we are getting better results by sharing these manually rather than using automation tools as these sites are recognizing that a lot of spam comes through).
4) Use Blog Directories
Technorati is one example that we use; blog directories categorize blogs so people can search by topic.
5) Put Calls to Action in your posts
Ask people to share or ask them their opinion about your topic. Building engagement is a key way to get more traffic so tell people what you want from them! Using a network such as Disqus helps too. Make sure you respond to any comments to help drive engagement and comment on other people’s blogs too.
6) Google Alerts
Set these up here. This will mean you get emailed every time someone adds something that is related to keywords you choose or URLs you choose. It’s a great way to find out where your blog is being discussed so you can thank people or be proactive with your customer service.