Image by: P4BLoX
By Charles Lewis
You’ve just spent two hours crafting your latest masterpiece about the “fine art of the deal,” and boy is it a good one. Now you want as many people to read it as possible.
The words you’ve written have relevance, meaning, balance and wisdom. You are simply trying to teach the world a thing or two, but P.T. Barnum you are not. If you don’t know who that is, let me Google that for you.
You need some help promoting that blog post. After all, you want to get the most out of your post.
Getting maximum exposure for your work can take time and can be very tedious, but the results speak for themselves. How do you penetrate that wall and, as the great poet and part-time singer Jim Morrison once said, break on through to the other side?
Here are a few ways to boost your blog post’s readership rate:
Social Media
It almost goes without saying, but not everyone is as clued in as you. Use Facebook or other social media outlets to promote your latest post. When you post a message containing a link to your blog on Facebook, the site automatically crafts a nifty link and graphic designed to grab people’s attention.
Live it. Learn It. Take advantage of it.
If that post is good enough for you to put your name on it and publish it on the web, than it is good enough for those friends, colleagues and business associates on your email list. Write a heart-felt introduction tailor-made for each contact group type, build specific lists, send out your email making sure to BCC all, and watch your viewership rise.
Please refrain from any spamming, of course. We’re talking about reaching out to the hundreds if not thousands of people you have been in contact with via email over the years. they wouldn’t mind hearing from you now and again any way.
Publish & Distribute A PDF Of Your Post
Make yourself a “hard copy” of your post in the form of a PDF file and distribute it via one of the many document sharing services available online, including Issuu.com, Docstoc and Scribd. It is a great way to grow awareness of a brand or website, grow the value of your content and build readership.
Make sure to include links to the original post, related posts you may have as well as your overall website address in your PDF so readers will bounce over to your site for more great ideas and information.
You can also port longer posts into e-Books, possibly using other similar content you’ve written to pad your pages. Be forewarned, however – you may have to sell your e-Book for 99 cents or some other minimum. But that’s OK, you get web status as a publisher and who knows, maybe you’ll sell a few.
Tap Into One Of The Many Blogger Networks & Directories
Bloggers around the globe have banded together in various ways to help promote their blogs and ideas with the rest of the world. There is power in numbers, after all. There are blog directories, blog communities and even something called a Blog Carnival, where editors choose dozens of stories about related topics, and publish them in a group for maximum eyeballs.
Get involved, make some friends, be a superstar.
Participate In Forums
Search for forums that have a thread that relates to the topic in your post. It shouldn’t be too hard to find. Make a comment on the forum – yes, you may have to register – and include “I just wrote about this topic on my blog/website” and then link to your blog post.
Don’t just randomly post your link, however. You’ll get a better response if you take a few seconds to craft a solid entry that engages readers. Using forums is a sure-fire way to start a conversation and to get the most out of your writing.