Blogging Tips

You’ve written your blog post. Now what? Does anyone know your blog post is there? After you’ve written and published your blog post, you have to let people know about it. Otherwise, your blog article is the proverbial tree that fell in the forest with no one in earshot to hear it crashing to the ground.

This is where the redistribution of your content comes into play, among other things you can do to create steady return traffic to your site. The best thing about many of these options is that they can be set up to be automated to some degree, taking a load off your mind and your to-do list.

Here are some ways in which you can be sure the world will know about your published blog post:

Redistribution

Post your article link in as many places as possible. Social bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious, and microblogging sites such as Tumblr and Twitter. There are also social networking sites like Facebook that enable you to easily share media from other websites directly on your profile. What this type of sharing does is provides a link that you’ve recommended to the people you know. They will check it out because it came from you. These are the people that are also most likely to leave you valuable feedback in the form of comments and follow-up redistribution.

With services like TwitterFeed you can set up your blog’s RSS to automatically be run through some of these third party websites, so you don’t have to remember to post the link every single time something has been published on your blog.

This is an important option not to abuse, however, as too much redistribution (especially automated redistribution) can be bothersome to your friends on these various niche networks. Find a good balance for your content redistribution. TwitterFeed, for example, lets you set the hour interval for how often it checks your blog for new content. If you write for multiple publications, spreading your auto-redistribution messages out over variable times is an effective way to still promote yourself without overwhelming friends and followers.

Indirect Redistribution

You can do a good portion of content redistribution yourself, but your message will be spread even further and wider if others redistribute your content as well. As I mentioned above, alerting friends and followers to your posted content can indirectly encourage them to re-post your content throughout their niche networks as well.

Otherwise, don’t be afraid to ask people to spread the word about your content. Do this directly in the message you’ve posted, or send a private message to individual friends and acquaintances you know will help you out.

The other people that can really help your article see a good amount of traffic are the influential users across various social networks. They may be different in each network, and for each industry. Make sure the influencers you approach are relevant to your content. If you are already friends with some of these influencers, then cash in on a friendly favor by asking them to do something simple like retweet a message you’ve already posted on Twitter. Otherwise, sending them a private request may pique their interest enough for them to help you out, or you could post a comment on their blog with the link to your post attached.

Again, there are some very fine lines to walk when dealing with requests for content redistribution. While less easy to abuse than automatic content redistribution, the consequences of potentially messing up an actual relationship with someone you know on a personal level are larger than merely annoying the masses with too many tweets.

An alternative to asking for direct favors could be throwing a contest, where you encourage others to spread your content. Give a prize to the person that gains the most return traffic. This could be through something easily measured and difficult to dispute, like retweets or Diggs.