I usually write posts about things I see happening and the resulting brand implications. But today’s post is different – it’s all about simple, no-brainer ideas that I didn’t have enough brains to think of myself.
Blog Post Dating
Blog posts live on the Internet forever. They are often discovered through organic search.
For example, someone might search for “musical notation” or “language precision” and come across my blog post — The Simple Precision of Language .
If I’m lucky, they read my blog and enjoy it and if I’m even luckier they like the post enough to read more of my posts, subscribe to my blog or maybe even give me a call about speaking at their event.
That’s the way the Internet works – you put out as much quality content as possible and try to make it as easy as possible for people to find it and respond to it. Do your job right and it can be very rewarding. Do it wrong and you’ll feel like you’re screaming into a gaping void and not even hearing an errant echo back for your troubles.
Most blogs are set up from the top down, starting with the title, followed by the date of publication, then the number of comments, the post itself, and finally the readers’ responses. And mine was too. Until someone pointed out to me that if people were finding my posts by organic search (as illustrated above) perhaps they were being turned off by an old publication date. After all, despite its universality and timeless nature, The Simple Precision of Language could be turning people away simply because it was posted on October 6, 2010.
Their simple suggestion was that I put the publication date at the end of the post so readers wouldn’t find it until after they had read my essay. The change was a quick and easy change for my webmaster that significantly increased the readership of my older posts.
What else? How about participating in other people’s podcasts?
Participating in Podcasts
While you work hard to build your online community, what if you share what you know on other people’s sites?
A few years ago, I was on Entrepreneur Radio, the brainchild of Marcy Rosenbaum and Seth Werner. You can listen to my debut interview right HERE.
I was also featured on Dan and Matt’s SPRH Podcast. You can hear that interview HERE.
Since then I’ve been on podcasts by Bob Burg, Anthony Iannarino, Shep Hyken, Terry Brock, JB Glossinger, Rory Vaden, Chuck Leddy, Phil Gerbyshak, Susan Solovic, and many more.
The reason this makes so much sense is that it allows you to build your brand by reaching out to other people’s communities. YOU provide your content. THEY provide the audience. It’s a simple no-brainer.
Reposting on LinkedIn
Here’s another no-brainer: If you write a blog, post it on LinkedIn. We have been reposting these blogs on LinkedIn for a little more than two years now. In that time, we have uploaded 157 articles and picked up 152,854 followers (from an original low census of under 5,000).
These are just three simple no-brainer ideas that you can start working on today. Any of them can make your online marketing more successful. And if you have more, please post them here in the comment section for everyone to benefit from.