You’ve just spent the last 6 hours researching and putting together the perfect post for your blog. You have all the words down, it’s 1, no 2, maybe 3 thousand words or longer, and you’re ready to release it to the world. You hit the publish button and check that everything looks good, now what? How do you get your article out into the world and start getting it in front of readers? It’s a difficult question to answer, but this article attempts to do just that. I’ve put together 9 must do steps that I do after I publish each and every article. If you’re looking for a repeatable list to do after each article post then read on.
Note that while there are a lot of tasks you can do after you publish an article these 9 steps are meant to be universal. They will work in any niche, for any blog, and are meant to be something that can benefit any writer. So, let’s get started.
Give it a Re-Read
The first thing I always do is give my article a re-read to make sure it makes sense and that the grammar is correct. This is probably the 10th re-read at this point, but it’s never wasted time.
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit the number of issues I find after publishing, and am always glad I read it again. Even if you only find a single issue your article will be that much better for it. If you follow only one step make sure it’s this one.
Blast Your Social Media
Next up, I always send out a blast to all my key social media channels. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are my go tos, but I also consider other sites like Pinterest and YouTube depending on my content and audience. Whatever your key sites are make sure they get updated with your new content.
I do caution about spending too much time here, especially for new bloggers. It’s easy to spend a lot of time making content work on other platforms when often that time was better spent elsewhere. For new blogs, I typically focus on 2-3 social channels, and then branch out later.
Consider Other Channels
It’s also a good idea to consider other channels outside of the core social ones. There’s lots of other websites out there hungry for content, and if you fit their niche they might be good places to target.
This requires a bit of work as it will depend heavily on the type of content you’re posting and your niche. My advice is to build up a list of potential sites and let this grow overtime. You don’t have to go out and get a big list of 100 sites for your first article, and you can always come back and share your content later.
Alert Your Followers
If you have a newsletter, it’s a good idea to schedule your new post to be sent out to your followers. I typically do a post every 1-2 weeks, and I keep notes of which articles are going to go out that week. This lets my followers know what I’m up to without bombarding them every few days when a new article goes up.
If you don’t already have an email list I suggest setting one up. You can get started with services like Mailchimp for free, and it literally only takes a few minutes to put the form onto your site.
Use it to Generate More Media
One trick I like to use is to reformat my blog posts into different types of content to further my reach. Images are generally pretty easy to create, and you can even take it a step further and make videos or even other articles.
For example, for this article I’ll likely create an infographic listing all the tips with a short blurb. This can then be posted to image sites like Pinterest and Instagram, all with links back to my article. I can also go out and create individual articles that go in depth for each step listed here. I can then go ahead and link to each of these in depth articles from here so it provides multiple benefits. There are lots of tricks like this to turn a single piece of content into multiple and further your reach.
Interact With Your Readers
Once the post is up it’s important to interact with readers and answer questions. This often comes in the form of blog comments, but also consider interactions on your social media sites and elsewhere.
This can really build a loyal following, and helps build a connection with your reader. It separates you from the countless other blogs out there, and shows a bit of the personality behind the words.
Link Back to it
Publishing a new article is a good time to go back and see if there’s any link opportunities in your past articles. Internal linking is an often overlooked aspect of SEO, and helps build a cohesive internal page structure.
I’ll generally spend 10 minutes looking over my past posts, and see if there’s any that are related to my new one. If so, I’ll find an appropriate place to link to from the old article. This can also help funnel traffic from older, more established articles to newer ones.
Study Your Analytics
After your post has been up for some time it’s important to take a look and study your analytics. This can help give you a sense of where your users are coming from, and which areas are working for visitor acquisition.
Depending on your traffic, this might take some time to be useful. You can do it with a few hundred pageviews, but the more you get the better your data will be. Once you do start studying your analytics you can make informed decisions on what steps to take for future articles.
Always Improve
Lastly, it’s always smart to look to improve. Over months or years an article can go stale and lose the value it once had. Even for “evergreen” articles it’s not a bad idea to revisit them from time to time. Adding details or extra sections to a post can really help breath new life to it. I recently added an FAQ section to many of my old blog posts on another site I run, and noticed an uptick in traffic afterwards.
Generally, I’ll set a TODO for a few months down the line after publishing an article. This helps me remember to revisit the article and improve upon it. Then, I’ll do that again and end up revisiting my articles 1-2 times per year. This helps keep even old content fresh. You can even take this time to generate new content from an old article, same as the tip mentioned above. When I’m dry for ideas, I’ll go back and improve older articles while at the same time using them to make new content.
While those are my 9 tips the possibilities are truly endless. These are simply 9 key steps I feel every article writer should be doing without fail. Whether you write about dogs or airplanes, hopefully the above steps will be applicable to you and help you take your blog to the next level.