Six Things to do with your blog post once you’ve hit publish

So you’ve blogged – hooray! Whether it was today last week, last month or even last year (I’ve been re-watching Friends in lockdown can you tell) one of the many things I get asked about is, well what do you do with your blog post once you’ve hit publish? So today I’ll share with you six things to do with your blog post once you’ve hit publish.

First of all, why do you need to do anything? Because you want to get as many clicks as possible to your website. The more clicks you get, the more attention your website is getting and the more your website will be flagged by Google as being a website to notice about that topic, therefore your rankings are more likely to go up.

Secondly, do you really need to blog? Is it that important? It’s such a great way to be visible, to get more clicks and to improve your SEO. I see such great results from it with my clients that it’s now a signature course called Blogging for Gold course. If you need more persuasion do check out my related post: Do I really need to blog?

So let’s dive into the six things to do with your blog post once you’ve hit publish, shall we?

1. Don’t just let your blog sit there on your website

At the moment you’re most likely in one of 3 camps:

Camp A – you find it incredibly hard to make time for blogging as you see it as separate from all your other marketing efforts. Frankly, it’s a ballache that can do one in your book and you actively avoid doing it until you really really have to and once you have hit publish, you quickly try and forget about it as other things are far more appealing.

Camp B – You blog sporadically which is something more than nothing, but you wish you had more consistency. You find it hard to get motivated but maybe you’ve done my Blogging for Gold course and know what needs to be done so you crack on and do it.

Camp C – You blog regularly because you know it’s going to help promote your business but you’re a bit lost when it comes to knowing what to do next and you keep getting lost in the rumours about this algorithm, that algorithm and getting the metaphorical knickers in a right old twist.

Any of these sound familiar? I got your back. No matter which camp you’re in, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t tell anyone that you’ve blogged. Sure it will be there on your shiny website, looking gorgeous but if no one’s checking out your website, it’s a beautiful empty museum. You deserve more than that.

2. Don’t be afraid of sharing it

Whenever people ask me about what to do with their blogs once they’ve published it, and I start to respond with where to share the blogs, they panic and say – but what if I annoy people? What if I irritate them so they unfollow me? What if, what if, what if. To that, I say this – what if you were so busy listening to what everyone else might be thinking or feeling that you never hit publish ever again and your business would run itself into the ground quietly. Noooooooo.

I know it can sound all very well and good to say ‘ignore the people who don’t like you’ but take it from a Marmite brand like me, there will be people who don’t like us and there’s not much we can do about that. It’s certainly not something to keep us awake at night.

Please don’t get caught up in this. What do we do instead? We focus on the people who love our content, who do hit like, who do send us DMs, who do book us, who do buy from us. We focus on them in the safe knowledge that there are plenty more like them out there, it’s up to us to connect with those people who simply don’t know about us yet.

3. How to share your blog on Facebook

So you’ve got your bright shiny new blog post, but how do you share it on Facebook? Here are a few ways that help:

• On your Facebook page – Do not just write “New blog post – click here”. This inspires no one! DO share the link to the blog post along with an excerpt from the blog post (one of the tips for example, or a brief intro to what they can expect when they click. Tag anyone else involved in the blog post (collaborators, suppliers, sources, references) and this will inspire them to share the post to their feeds (you can drop them an email to ask them to do so as well, as it’s only going to benefit them if they do!)
• In Facebook groups – Don’t just post in any old group, check the group rules first! Don’t just share it with “New blog post – would love to know what you think” if you want to get a response. Ask specific questions – “do you like the images I’ve added here?” or “I’ve tried a new style of graphic in Canva*, what do you think?”  (Some people I’ve found don’t want to ask questions for fear that no one will answer, and that’s fine, but it’s not a reason not to ask the questions!)
• On your personal Facebook profile – this is possibly the contested option but it’s one I still encourage. Your friends and family want to support you and your small business, right? If they don’t, that’s on them. But I’m often pleasantly surprised by how people are inspired by what I share and it’s great for word of mouth referrals.

Bonus tip: use the Facebook scheduler to set up a few posts over the next two weeks to promote your blog post using different excerpts / different images from the blog post to make it look slightly different each time and test out what gets engagement.

4. How to share your blog on Instagram

With your bright shiny new blog post, how do you share it on Instagram? Here are a few ways that help:

• In your Instagram bio – you can update the link in your Instagram bio so it isn’t just your website link but instead your latest blog post link. You can take this one step further and use a service like linktree to create a list of shortcuts to your latest blog post and other key pages on your website.
• In your Instagram Stories – once you’ve added the post to your main feed, you can share the post to your Stories along with GIFs, music (if you have this feature), text, you name it. You can talk to the camera about the content of the blog post and direct them to click the link in the bio. If you don’t tell people what to do, they’ll never do it, but if you do tell people what to do, they are much more likely to do it (it’s up to them if they do or not, so don’t take away that opportunity from them!)
• In your Instagram feed – single photo – you can share a photo from your blog post along with an excerpt from the blog post (one of the tips for example, or a brief intro to what they can expect when they click. Tag anyone else involved in the blog post (collaborators, suppliers, sources, references) and this will inspire them to share it to their Stories.
• In an Instagram Reel – you can create a Reel using one of the many brilliant templates in Canva* (I love using their Reel templates as you can amend the timings, update to match your own brand colours + fonts, the whole works) and then upload to Instagram Reels!
• In your Instagram feed – carousel – you can create a post with multiple images when you post to your main Instagram feed and I’ve found this works particularly well with advice blog posts, so you can create one image or graphic per tip and then post them all in a carousel post. You can check out an example of a carousel post I did here. Notice how I’ve told the reader to “Save this for when you need to be reminded” at the top and bottom of the caption. Doing this gets me a lot of saves which is equally as good as getting likes, comments and shares (yes, I said equally because that’s the Instagram algorithm, there is no hierarchy)

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A post shared by You > Top of Google (she/her) (@maddy.shine)

5. How to share your blog on Pinterest

With your bright shiny new blog post, how do you share it on Pinterest? Here are a few ways that help:

• On your Pinterest boards – you have a Pinterest profile, so you’ll have boards. These are great to group your content together, whether it’s your content that you’ve pinned or someone else’s. Be sure to add your blog post to your Pinterest boards, and yes you can add it to more than one board, it depends on the topic!
• Use Canva* to create Pinterest graphic per blog post. I love using Canva, can you tell? I use it to make graphics like this…

6. Where else?

You don’t have to limit your blogs to sharing on social media either. You can update your email signature, your autoresponder / out of office, your enquiry response email template, the sequence of emails you’ve set up for when people download a freebie. Don’t limit yourself, show off your hard work!

So there we have it, six things to do with your blog post once you’ve hit publish. Do you have to do them all? Not right away. But if you start by trying one of the suggestions, you’re going to be a whole lot further one than before you started.

If you enjoyed this do check out some of my related blogs:

Related: How long should a blog post be?

Related: How do I rank for this keyword?

Related: Does Google know I exist?

Want to dive in deeper? Come and join my 12 week Blogging for Gold program and get your website to the top of Google thanks to your blog.

*this blog post contains affiliate links so if you click and purchase through them, I will get a few pennies in the pot. Thanks for your support!

See you next time

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