It takes more time to promote a blog then it does to write one. For a blog post, you spend a couple hours brainstorming ideas, creating an outline, writing the blog, finding pictures, then putting it all together and publishing it. You’re done, right? Wrong! The next days, weeks, months and years are filled with posting that one blog on every social media account you have.
Or you can publish the post, promote it once and hope that those hours of writing will somehow pay off. But marketing just doesn’t work that way. So with every new blog post comes continuous promotion. But who has time for all that?
A balance of planning and automation tools will help you save time. Use these tools and techniques to promote your next blog:
- Write All the Headlines
- Use an Editorial Calendar
- Schedule Your Blog posts
- Design all the Graphics
- Automate Evergreen Content
Write Multiple Headlines Before Publishing
The post is finished and you wrote the one perfect headline -but unfortunately, one headline is not enough. Your audience and the social media algorithm don’t want to see that same headline over and over. Most experts say you need to write anywhere from 15-25 headlines to use when promoting your one blog post. (Ugh! More work)
Write all your headlines in a document or spreadsheet before promotion. When the time comes to write the post all you have to do is copy and paste. Writing all those headlines is time-consuming, but the more you do it the better you become and the faster it gets.
Believe it or not, most of your headlines are already written, you just have to find them. Look for additional headlines in the:
- Subheadings
- Great quotes, lines or points you made
- Research you used
Turn your ‘how to’ blog post into a ‘list post’ by changing a few words. “How to Save Time Promoting Blogs on Social Media” becomes: “5 Simple Ways to Save Time Promoting Blogs on Social Media”.
There are dozens of lists to help create headlines fast. Search on Google for Headline Formulas and you’ll see plenty of examples.
Stay Organized by Using an Editorial Calendar
Promoting your post includes sharing it on all your social media sites, with different best practices for each site. This means numerous posts each day. To keep track of which posts you are promoting, on which days and on which sites, use a calendar.
Spend time completing the calendar for each social media account. Once completed, you have each day planned, knowing the day, time and platform to share that post.
Design a calendar for yourself using a spreadsheet, using one calendar for each social media site. Include the date, time, URL and headline. You can also download a pre-designed editorial calendar. There are tons of them available online, each created to suit your particular needs, so just use your search engine of choice to find them.
Schedule Your Blogs Ahead of Time
Make life easier on yourself and set aside a few minutes each day and schedule all your posts, on all your social media sites for the next day or days. Once it is done you can forget about the promotion part and enjoy something else. There are many automation tools that can help.
A drip campaign allows a person to post pre-written messages during a certain timeline. Missinglettr, lets users create a drip marketing campaign for each blog you write and automatically posts it on your social media account. Once the post is published, Missinglettr creates 9 different posts with different images that are scheduled and posted throughout the year. You can quickly customize the content, images, and hashtags for all the posts. Free and paid plans are available.
In addition, you can use daily managers like Buffer or Hootsuite. First, write numerous posts with different headlines for the blog. Then, schedule the day and time you want it posted. They allow you to connect multiple social media accounts so you can adapt each message specifically to each platform. Free and paid versions available as well, depending on your needs.
Design All Your Graphics at Once
Your blog and all the social media platforms demand different size images. Instead of using one image that gets cut off of on each site, create multiple versions.
Canva, which has a free and paid version, is a useful tool that allows users to create beautiful and consistent graphics. Their paid version will let you create one image and then they will resize it for you to post on multiple sites. The free version requires you to do all the re-sizing.
Either way, spend time before promoting your blog designing the title image and other images you want to use so they properly fit the platform you are using it on.
Automate Evergreen Content
Time spent writing a blog is valuable, so you need to get the most out of it. You write evergreen blogs so they can be promoted whenever. It would be great if there was a tool that would just post your evergreen articles and you would never have to worry about it. But wait - there is!
Social Jukebox is designed to promote evergreen content. Like the other companies, there is a free and paid version. Sign-up through your social media account and set the days and times you want your content to post. The free version allows a user two jukeboxes. Inside your jukebox, you can add posts or tweets, hashtags, images, and URLs. Once you turn on the jukebox the tool randomly chooses what to post for that day.
One automation tool to stay away from is linking your social media accounts. By linking your accounts you can automatically send your tweet to post on Facebook, etc. The problem then becomes how the original post now looks on the new platform - and usually it doesn’t look good. Pictures posted on Instagram only show up as links on Twitter, Facebook posts have unnecessary hashtags from Twitter, you get the idea.
Save yourself time and the headache of promoting your blogs. Before promotion of an article begins, plan ahead by writing out numerous headlines and designing the graphics. Use an editorial calendar, automation tools, or both to help with scheduling posts.
Your article will get read by more people, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time.
What do you do to save time when promoting your blog on social media? Any tips or tools you want to add?
