How To Spin A Blog Post

Now, this blog post might come off as somewhat provocative.

Sorry about that.

Let’s say you’ve created a corporate blog post, you’ve published it and now… what? You do want your post to fly, right?

The easy answer is to create content that is so “remarkable” it gets viral all by itself. But this is a flawed logic.

If no-one has told you this before, then let be be the first to tell you:

Viral Spread Does’t Necessarily Equal Good Content.

Good Content Doesn’t Necessarily Equal Viral Spread.

Because people expect content to find them, not the other way around. So, how do you get your amazing blog post out there? Well, let me just give you a flavour of some of the steps to take for your blog post.

Step 1: Twitter, Hootsuite, Bitly.com & TweetAdder

You push your post on Twitter. Maybe you use Hootsuite for management, but you need to make sure you push your link with a trackable url-shortener, like bitly.com, preferably with a vanity url.

And you want to make sure to have researched proper hashtags. Maybe you use a dashboard like TweetAdder to build community over time. And of course, you tweak the message to allow for retweets.

Step 2: Retweeting & Twitter Lists

Now, when you get retweets, you don’t want to be an asshole about it. So you make sure to be polite and say thank you. After all, those who have retweeted you once are more likely to do it again in the future.

And when retweeting, you could also go the extra mile to share their website link to your followers for reciprocity. And maybe make targeted Twitter lists for retreaters and make sure to follow them, even if they don’t follow you.

Step 3: Blogger Tribes

For some extra boost, you might have joined a tribal Twitter community, like Triberr. Or a closed bloggers’ forum on Facebook or elsewhere.

For you to get most out of it, you need to actively share others content, or else why should they bother about helping you get the word out? This creates important relationships for the future of spread.

Step 4: “A Little Help From My Friends”

Now, hopefully you have some sort of relationships with social media naturals who respect you and the stuff you write. But they got a lot on their plate, so you might want to poke them a little, asking if they would be interested in endorsing your post.

You only do this with good and smart people, because they might get back to you at a later date asking for the exact same favour and if their stuff is crap, then you’re in trouble if you have to say no to them too many times.

Step 5: Pinging The Right People

Hopefully, you’ve managed to target someone, like an individual or a company, in your post. They might be very interested in sharing your message with their following on Twitter.

They’d do it partially to help you out maybe, but mostly for endorsing themselves. Which of course is okay. But you need to make them aware that post exist. So you might want to send out a couple of tweets in order to “ping” mention them.

Step 6: Now, Say “Thank You” Again

After some hard work, and depending on your existing relationships, readership and social community size, you reach a critical mass of reactions on Twitter and you actually start seeing some sharing that takes place completely without your help. Awesome!

But make sure you say “thank you” to not only to the retweeters, but to anyone helping you get the word out!

Step 7: Do The Same With Facebook

Now, it’s time to take a closer look at Facebook. Basically you take several of the same steps with Facebook as you did with Twitter.

You can use a dashboard like RelationDesk.com to actually use email sendouts to influencers who are either mentioned in the article or who could be extra interested in it. Of course, you make sure to suggest them a reasonable call to action.

Step 8: Incentivise For Extra Spice

Instead of just posting, you might want to add some spice to it. Maybe use the functions in dashboards like WildFire (Google) or BuddyMedia (Facebook) to maybe create an on-site Facebook quiz, contest or a giveaway in relation to your blog post link.

Maybe you have some digital goods to hand out, like ebooks, invites or deals?

Step 9: Curate Your Content Well

When you post, you probably have to spend some time cropping images for it to look good when you post. Almost always, images have the most appeal to Facebook users in terms of inbound reactions.

For multi-lingual operations, you might want to geo-target your post as well in order not to mess with your EdgeRank momentum.

Step 10: Stick To Your EdgeRank Strategy

When it comes to Facebook, it’s important to understand the dynamic of the medium. The EdgeRank (how many Facebook posts to post each day?) is ruthless, so as a Facebook Page you really have to deserve your space.

Because people are already complaining about too much corporate speak on the platform. A call to action that is within Facebook is much stronger than a call to action that requires the user to click and do something outside of Facebook.

Step 11: Seeding

Now, you might also want to practice some seeding, like Facebook Stories, Facebook Ads, Promoted Status Updates and so forth. If you didn’t have some sort of idea about call to action in your post before, you’ll recognise this now.

It’s at times like these you realise the value of having a highly active Facebook fan base, because then you won’t have to seed all that much. In the best of all worlds, your fans will feel incentivised to share and interact with you. But that’s unfortunately not always the case.

Step 12: Spin Other Platforms As Well

When you’re done with Facebook, there are other social platforms to process. If you posted an infographic like this one, then Pinterest might be an interesting venue to explore.

If you have video, then you might work your community on Youtube, Vimeo or even SocialCam. And oh, don’t forget your community on Instagram for images! Don’t have a community to work yet? Well, then it’s time to start.

Step 13: Eh… No

Let’s skip step 13.

Your blog post doesn’t need any bad luck, right?

Step 14: LinkedIn Groups

Also, LinkedIn is becoming increasingly important. You can’t just post to you LinkedIn status feed, because you also have to work relevant groups. Now, most groups don’t like drive-by blog post promoters. So you have to make sure you explain in plain words to the group why you’re posting about your blog post.

Maybe ask them for feedback or ignite a relevant discussion around your topic. To really earn your respect and group popularity, maybe you should at least once a week check in your LinkedIn groups and make sure to interact and add to others’ discussion as well?

Please note: There are so many groups on LinkedIn, so you better be a part of several. By being a member of several, you don’t have to post all your blog post to the same group over and over again. And when you’ve posted and you get reactions such as comments, you better be listening so you can practice some top both reply management. If not to keep the discussion alive. For a corporate blog, LinkedIn could easily become a stronger relevant traffic driver than both Facebook and Twitter combined.

Step 15: Is It Evergreen?

And don’t forget the Digg-type sites. I like StumbleUpon, so I try to make sure to Stumble at least every evergreen post.

(The term “evergreen” means that the post will be just as interesting to the right person in two months as it is today.)

Step 16: Stumbleupon Paid Discovery

When it comes to StumbleUpon, they actually have a great and underrated paid media format, Paid Discovery.

Pretty relevant targeting and it could prove to be worth the extra budget, especially for evergreen blog post with valuable content that is easy to scan and digest quickly.

Step 17: The Scene Of The Crime

So, now you’ve worked your social media presence, maybe you’re done for the day? Well, not quite. You remember the blog where you actually published the article? Hopefully you’ve gotten some comments(?) and they might need tending to.

You might also want to ping the commenters on Twitter so they know that you’ve answered.

Step 18: Do Some “VIP” PR

If you have frequent commenters, treat them like pure gold. Buy a relevant book and send it to them, like a way of showing that you appreciate their contributions. People hate reading blog posts without comments and comments are really hard to come by these days.

But I do know that many people are up for commenting, as long as they don’t have to be first to comment on a post. So the “regulars” are exactly that—pure gold. So make sure you treat them as such.

Step 19: Your Mailing List

Most respectable blogs today focuses on building an email list. How is your list doing? Can it be used to promote your blog post in any way? Don’t feel tempted to send exactly everything you post out, be selective.

If the blog post isn’t groundbreaking enough, you might want to add something tangible to give a little back to your faithful subscribers, like a free ebook or a report or something.

Step 20: Syndication

Hopefully, you’ve also got band of subscribers on RSS and mobile. Make sure your feed looks good in a reader (embedded Youtube-clips have a tendency to disappear) and make sure the post looks good on mobile devices as well. Also double check that your CMS is automatically pinging relevant search platforms.

In Sweden, it’s important to ping Twingly, for example.

Step 21: Appreciate Your Referrers

Head over to your analytics dashboard, like Google Analytics. Check for referring sites. Maybe some other blogger have sent some traffic your way. Because that is awesome, it gives your site SEO authority so if so, you better head over there and at least leave a comment. Maybe even use your social platforms to promote their post about your post as a token of appreciation.

Phew!

So now maybe you’re done. For now at least. But you need to monitor reactions and respond accordingly as long as the blog post is being shared. It’s a lot of low-intensive work, but hopefully you’re managing a lot of good content a so you can find synergies for your cross promotional work.

Are you in panic by now?

Don’t be. That’s not the point with this post. I personally don’t have time to practice all this for the Doktor Spinn blog. This blog is my passion project and I don’t get paid to blog, so I do it on my own free time. I do what I can in what I what time I have.

If I can manage to grow a bigger community, then it might prove to be a good a idea to devote some more time into these processes, but I’m fine with growing my personal engagement in steps if the love is out there.

Insight: Publishing Is Just A Start, Not The End Of A Process

To my knowledge, they don’t teach you this stuff in schools. A lot of people in traditional marketing industries don’t actually get this. So if you can find a proper Community Manager, this is some of the work they have to do to spin your corporate content. And it does take time.

Some might argue that they don’t see any ROI in all of this, but if that’s the case, then what’s the point to publishing digital content in the first place?

After all, so much of this actually falls under customer service and thought leadership anyway… and if these two elements are not in your business plan, well, then you probably have more pressing matters to tend to.

Finally, I know I’ve missed tons of stuff. Feel free to add ideas and techniques in the comments!

Photo credit: JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images)