|

8 Smart Tips to Maximize Your Blog Content

Sharing is caring!

8 smart tips for maximize your blog contentCreating a great article for your blog is a long process and it takes time to craft the perfect headline, write an interesting article and then find a photo. Many bloggers stop working once they hit publish and wonder why no one is coming to their blog or sharing. Cross promoting your blog content across social media platforms sounds complicated but once you put it into your routine, you'll find that it's worth the effort.

Think of your blog as your home base and work to bring all your social audience back to your content. Try these eight tips to maximize your content and squeeze out every bit of goodness that you can for each article that you create. Working smarter, not harder is the way to go with blogging and social media.

8 smart tips to maximize your content

1. Add your blog posts to Pinterest

After you hit publish, take a your great image and pin it to a Pinterest board set up for your blog. The lifespan of a pin is the longest of any social media platform. This one reason alone is worth the time you spend on Pinterest. Using the proper size and type of image makes a huge difference in your future Pinterest traffic.

8 ways to maximize content

Resource: 4 Ways to Create Pinterest Images That Get Shared

2. Tweet pins with IFTTT

Tweet your Pinterest pins automagically from your Pinterest to Twitter using an IFTTT recipe that will show the image on your tweets. The reason that I do this instead of tweet from Pinterest is so that you see the beautiful image on Twitter. My theory is that I have more followers on Twitter than I do on Pinterest and I'd love for my Twitter followers to follow me on Pinterest too.

Tweets with images are receiving 150% more retweets, 18% more clicks than tweets without images, and 89% more favorites. You want your tweets to get more retweets, clicks and favorites, right?

tweet pins

Here is an example of a tweet that was generated by a Pinterest pin. Make sure when you create your pin on Pinterest that you keep in mind that the description is your tweet.

Resource: How Twitter's new expanded images increase clicks, retweets and favorites 

3. Be tweetable

Add a tweetable quote to your blog posts to engage Twitter users using Click to Tweet. Try it here {click to tweet}

4. Maximize your email

Add the link to your latest blog post underneath your email signature using WiseStamp. You only need to set this up once and it will update via RSS feed. While you are setting it up, make sure you add your social media links as well. wise stamp email signature

5. Make things look good

Take the time to properly format your posts. This is especially true on Google+.  Each social platform has its own style and if you aren't customizing your content, you're missing the mark.

On Google+, I always have a great photo, bold headline, some interesting text, a link to the article, a link to pin it later (if I pinned in on Pinterest) and a few relevant hashtags to help people find the post with the photo credit at the bottom. I spent over a year tweaking my perfect post formula to find one that works for me and people relate to this post style. Spend time to create your own perfect post formula to help build your following. Don't simply copy my style – your twist is what will make you stand out.

6. Embed media on your blog

Did you know you can embed rich media can you add to your blog? Rich media is content that people can interact with on your blog such a retweet a tweet or +1 a Google+ post. It's a great way to repurpose content that did well on social media and continue the conversation on your blog. I especially like to do this with Google+ Hangouts by embedding the YouTube link on my blog and adding commentary or tips that we shared.

Here are some ideas for you with links to the services that allow you to embed their content.

Embed tweets

Pinterest pins

Instagram posts

YouTube videos

Facebook posts

Google+ posts

Vine videos

Share some of your great social media content that people might not see if they aren't on that platform or use others posts as examples in how-to posts. It adds great social proof to your blog and people may not know that you are on Pinterest or Instagram. It gives people the opportunity to take a deep dive into your social media and see what you're all about or it can help punctuate a point you're trying to make. And it's just more interesting.

7. Add a call to action (CTA) to your posts

“A call-to-action (usually abbreviated as CTA) is an image or line of text that prompts your visitors, leads, and customers to take action. It is, quite literally, a “call” to take an “action.” You can add a call to action at the bottom of a blog post, a Facebook or Google+ post or anywhere that you want someone to take action.

A Facebook CTA could be:

LIKE this post or SHARE if you found this interesting.

A Twitter CTA could be:

Please RT this important survey on CTAs.

As I've already mentioned, pin it for later is my most successful CTA and I use it everywhere.

Resource: What's a Call to Action?

8. Be consistent

Things take time to build and grow. Cross promoting your content across social platforms will take a little time to get it started but if you're consistent, these tips will help build your blog readership, build your social media platform, and make all your blogging efforts more successful.

For example, adding a call to action of “pin it for later” was a risk to try on Google+ since when I started doing it, hardly anyone was on Pinterest but over time it has paid off for me and started other people using it for their content too. Now if I post and forget to add “pin it for later” one of my friends on Google+ asks for it. Consistency pays off.

Resource: How Google+ and Pinterest Go Together Like Peanut Butter and Jelly

I hope I gave you a few new tips that you can implement to maximize your blog content and find lots of new readers across your social platform.

What tips do you have for me? What CTA's have you been using successfully? Let me know in the comments below. If you like this, please make sure you sign up to receive updates from my blog under this post.

Photo credit: Big Stock Photos

Article by Peg Fitzpatrick

Sharing is caring!

37 Comments

  1. Outstanding Peg! A word of advice for anyone with responsive or mobile websites, embedded content doesn’t always scale correctly. Plus, it will increase load time, so if you know you have a high % of mobile traffic (who doesn’t?) work with your web professional to figure out the optimal way to embed content.

  2. PegFitzpatrick I do, but, for example, in the case of embedded G+ posts they don’t scale to the responsive layout I have. Haven’t quite figured out how to get around that one, so the comment was more a general perception and word of advice than anything else 🙂 The load time, though, I’ve figured out, and it revolves around putting the script that calls up the embedded media at the bottom of your site, only one time.

  3. stephanhov I just pulled this article up on my phone and I could view all the embeds but that doesn’t mean that everyone can. I have a Genesis theme this is mobile responsive and a new phone but that isn’t always the case. Excellent point!

  4. WiseStamp looks like a great idea, but I need something that can work with Outlook 2010.  Is there an easy way to add my RSS feed to this email address?

  5. Well, you did it again. Another graduate course in blogging.  Thank you for all this valuable information. Now I have to study this and learn even more. Great stuff that I was not aware of. Thanks.

  6. PegFitzpatrick Sandra Sallin How about giving a seminar on all of this stuff. Two days to fill our minds. I’ll buy the first ticket. I’ll buy the second ticket.
    I bet you don’t realize how much you know that the rest of us don’t.

  7. Great article Peg!  The only thing I might add is if you do pin video to Pinterest that you add (Video) in the description.  Most of the time I forget, but when I do remember it seems to increase engagement.  The same goes for Twitter as well.

  8. Jeff Sieh Interesting Jeff! Are you pinning the video? If you pin with the IFTTT recipe, the video will tweet but I guess it won’t show on Hootsuite. I add {infographic} on mine sometimes too.

  9. I absolutely love this post! I’ve recommended WiseStamp to nonprofits but for some reason haven’t used it myself. That will have to change. And I’ve been meaning to check out IFTTT. I didn’t know I could tweet from Pinterest using this app. How cool is that? Thanks!

  10. PegFitzpatrick Jeff Sieh I’m pinning the video straight from YouTube with the Pin It browser plugin.  Haven’t tried pinning video using IFTTT.

  11. So helpful! I love sharing my images on Pinterest, so fun! I’ve been wanting to add ‘tweet this’ quotes but I haven’t found any great quotes that I thought were appropriate, will think about this for tpmy next post. Thanks for the push….will definitely give it a shot!
    I love this IFTTT recipe too, will check it out so I can better connect my tweeps to my pins!

  12. CaballoFrances We never follow our own good advice. Actually I do all these things but you know what I mean. 

    The IFTTT recipe is for an RSS feed from Pinterest to Twitter, they don’t have an easy way to just whip it to Twitter. It takes a little bit to set it up but works really well.

  13. TianaKaiMiami Hi Tiana! I bet you have lots of great little quotables in your posts or you can just make it the title of the post or something like I did saying “hey check this post out.” 

    Tweeting pins with photos is fantastic!

  14. I’m definitely adding tweetables to my future blogs and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the wisetamp!  Thanks for all the great ideas!

  15. elainerealtor Tweetables are fun and smart. It’s cool to see a tweet that someone did from your post. Make sure you add your mention so you’ll be able to respond to people.

  16. OK, I’m going to try and learn one of these each day. Otherwise it’s overwhelming.

  17. PegFitzpatrick great point!! I find that I end up tweeting some fun descriptions that I pull from my posts, so I will have fun turning them into tweetable quotes! It’s on my To-Do List this week! 🙂 Thanks for the extra tip.

  18. Thanks for this Peg. I always wanted to get my Pins to load an image when I tweet them so I was super happy to find the IFTTT recipe. I can’t figure out how to make it work though – it keeps giving me the error smackdown. GAH.

  19. PegFitzpatrick Sandra Sallin Already failed. can’t figure out the IFTTT. Must check out youtube for a video. But I did post a photo in Twitter so that’s one. 🙂 I may be very happy with that one. Also posted another photo of a blog post on Pinterest.

  20. Very cool tips Peg. I am totally going to apply some of these.  🙂 Now watch me share this.

  21. PegFitzpatrick Exactly! Will do. Honestly, I’ll probably get distracted and….   😀

  22. LittleAnimation Oh geez! It took me a LONG time to get my recipe perfect too. Did you copy my recipe? Here’s what it looks like on the back end. It needs to match this exactly.

  23. PegFitzpatrick Thanks! Yes I matched it, but I have no idea what to do next. Do I fill in the Action boxes when I want the tweet to happen or will it automagically work with whatever/whenever I pin?

  24. PegFitzpatrick Hurrah!! It works!! …it doesn’t tweet the blog post like in your “12 Most Jedi-Master Ways to Rock Google+” tweet sample though. Is that the same recipe? 
    So many questions!

  25. Totally LOVE #4 !! I am heading right over to my email account and making this awesome change!  Overall really great tips…Thank you  PegFitzpatrick

  26. PegFitzpatrick Sorry for the “double” comment…I intended to post as SocialMediaDDS  and realized too late that I was posting as my alter ego 😉

Comments are closed.