November 10th, 2007 | by Brook Durant |
You’ve just written THAT article. You know the one I’m talking about… The “launch my career and make me the next
blogging superstar” article. The one that will cause money to spill out of the heavens into your lap. One problem… Who’s going to read it? More importantly ask yourself, “who cares to read it?” A big fat chunk of no good it does to write such a bad ass article but not have anyone read it. I have some suggestions which have worked out great for me as far as
promotion goes. Here’s a few of them -
Write a GOOD promotional piece
Spend 10 or 15 minutes and write up a short (500 word) promotional piece for your upcoming article. Save it on your desktop and NEVER LOOK AT IT AGAIN (until you’ve posted the article of course). Reason being is that you don’t want to have your article and your promo piece sounding like each other. After all if you’ve just shown me 95% of your content in the promo why should I spend my time reading your article? Think of it like movie trailers. Almost all of the good scenes are ruined because you’ve seen them so many times before you ever get to the movies.
Decide where to promote
You really have two viable options at this point.
- Blanket promotion to anyone and everyone willing to listen
- Laser targeted promotion to a very specific audience
The blanket option will get more eyes on the promo you’ve written (the GOOD promo…) in step one but it will result in a very poor conversion. On the other hand the laser targeted promos will get seen by less people but will result in a much better conversion rate.
Decide how to promote
Once you figure out where to promote it you need to decide how you’ll promote your article. Spend some time considering this before you ever begin to write and keep on considering it through the entire writing process. It will make things much easier if you have this step planned out.
Get your timing down
Everything needs to be timed properly when it comes to promoting an article. Certain times of the day and week are better than others. Weekends are generally poor performers for getting content viewed. Same with really odd hours of the day. It’s also important to not release and promote too rapidly. In other words as soon as your article goes live resist the urge to submit it to every social networking site on the planet. I know it’s hard, but it is well worth it.
Promote your ASS off
Suppose you just spent 20 minutes writing a promo, 45 minutes researching possible promotional paths, and another 45 minutes writing and editing the article. That’s a lot of time invested for no return. So you might as well promote, promote, promote!
But back to my question. Why do you think anyone cares? I have my own theories, but I’d like to hear yours first.
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Tags: Blogging, marketing, promotion
By Ivy on Nov 10, 2007
i’ve been asking myself the same thing……….
so far, zero results………..
Ivy’s last blog post..Denouncing Suffrage
By A Blog about Nothing on Nov 10, 2007
Ivy - Don’t ask yourself, ask others.
By Simonne on Nov 11, 2007
That’s true nobody cares. They are too busy promoting their own work
However, if you get in touch with people, they may become curious to know more about you, so they’d visit your blog. If your content is fulfilling an need they have, you got the as loyal readers. If a reader will find one of your articles really useful or extremely entertaining, she’d sent it to her friends (at least I do so). So I’d say one of the key challenges is to get people’s attention, followed by supplying inbformation up to their standards.
By Markk on Nov 11, 2007
Simonne, yes, you’re right there about getting in touch with people. One easy way is via comment. If we don’t reach out then we’ll be left in the dark.
Markk’s last blog post..Zen And Blogging: Are They Aligned?
By Blackysky on Nov 11, 2007
nobody care when you don’t target your audience or your articles does not worth a large audience… some subject are better then others… tech still hot on the web or news subjects or celebrity subjects.. I compare all this as flirting… You need the right tactic, the right word at the right time, at the right place. Until you don’t understand that success is far away…
Blackysky’s last blog post..Direct sale find an advertiser part 1
By A Blog about Nothing on Nov 11, 2007
Simmonne - I think you kind of missed the point of what I wrote. This wasn’t about long term relationship building it was about creating and implementing a short-term promotion plan that would be both easy and effective. I wrote the article with the assumption in mind that you’ve already created the content that is “up to peoples standards” and you easily gets their attention…
Markk - I’m with you guys on commenting. I think it is one of the most powerful tools out there.
Blackysky - Very true. You won’t get anywhere if you don’t promote to the right audience as I said in the article.
By Eric "Speedcat Hollydale" on Nov 13, 2007
It seems that bloggers run in “packs”. When I first started this whole blogging thing, I assumed that readers would flock from searches. This does happen, yet these visitors are usually lurkers, and move on quickly. The best, and most productive way to increase a audiance is to be involved and seen in a “popular pack”.
Of course, never commenting or linking will leave you in the dark. Any productive site is known and followed by a group… of course the bigger the group, the better.
Eric “Speedcat Hollydale”’s last blog post..Bill Clinton Scandal with Hillary Sauce
By A Blog about Nothing on Nov 13, 2007
Eric - Very well said. Pack mentality. I never thought of it that way.