Devin Pallone — May 9, 2018 No business blog can achieve its full potential without integration with other channels. Multi-channel marketing is an absolute must for the success of your campaign. If you’re feeling lost when it comes to integrating a blog with social media platforms, podcasts, and/or email campaigns, don’t worry. Use Part 2 of this series as a jumping-off point for seamless blog integration. We’ll start with an explanation of why blog integration is so critical to your marketing campaign.
Does Integration Really Work? What Do the Statistics Say?
Years ago, blogging was its own separate entity. A business’s blog was completely independent of the brand’s social media channels. Blogs were serious and often longer, delving into research and in-depth topics like the eBook does today. Social media blurbs, on the other hand, were short, fun, and personal. The modern marketer, however, knows that blogs and social media posts now complement one another. In fact, 93% of bloggers use their social media pages to promote and advertise their blogs.
Why do almost all successful bloggers integrate their blogs with paid promotions to drive traffic? Because it works! Your blog will see a bump in traffic from users who spotted your SM posts about it before or after publishing. Proper integration is key, however, to this symbiotic relationship. After pressing “Publish” on a brand-new blog post, your work isn’t over yet. Next, head over to your social media profiles to let your followers know that a new post is live and ready for reading. Otherwise, you invested significant time and energy into creating a post just to neglect it once it’s published.
Keep in mind that integration isn’t only one-sided. While you can use your SM accounts, YouTube channel, and even answering questions on Quora to promote your blog, you can also use your blog to promote your other types of content. For instance, a blog post can enrich and expand upon snippets you teased readers with on your Twitter the day before, effectively driving traffic to your social media posts and/or other content marketing campaigns. Your social media will be the place readers go for the latest news, but the blog will be the ultimate link they follow for more information.
3 Steps to Easy Blog Integration and Audience Building
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If you’re one of many business owners juggling a blog, email campaigns, website copy, YouTube videos, podcasts, advertisements, and other marketing techniques, integration might feel shrouded in mystery – or like something only someone with more time could handle. Neither of these are true. Thinking integration isn’t for you will only do your brand a grave disservice. With a few simple steps and tips, you can be well on your way to effective blog integration in no time. A brief overview of the basics will get you started on the right foot:
- Shout your message on social. First and foremost, tackle the art of promoting your blog on social media. This does not mean cross-posting across channels, or blasting the same message on all your platforms. Instead, it means developing a unique message for each profile introducing your blog post according to the best practices for said channel. Writing unique posts will increase visibility and engagement, and is worth the extra time and energy.
- Consider paid advertising. Expose your blog as much as you can through a variety of outlets, including paid advertising. Paid advertising with the right strategy can significantly increase your blog’s visibility and traffic. Promoting through Facebook Ads, for example, can convert cold traffic into long-term readers by putting your blog in front of the right people at the right time.
- Don’t forget email. Email marketing isn’t dead yet; in fact, data shows that the world is sending more emails per year than ever before (around 74 trillion, in case you were wondering). Integrate email campaigns with your blog by sending emails to the people you mentioned and the links you included. They might just respond by reposting your blog. Also, set up a subscription list where your customers can sign up for email alerts every time you post a new blog.
Running a coordinated marketing campaign instead of simply writing blogs, publishing them, and hoping for the best can help your content reach a much wider audience. Start with an overarching marketing goal and then create a strategy to spread your blog content far and wide. Pro Tip: Add share buttons to your blog posts for fast and easy social media integration, and to encourage readers to promote your blog across social channels (for free!). Once you’ve published a few blogs and marketed them across channels a few times, you’ll start to build a loyal readership.
Get Started with Blog Integration
It’s no secret that blog integration works. You’ll be amazed at the increase in traffic you’ll see when you integrate your blog with other marketing efforts. Promoting your small business’s blog across multiple channels can completely revolutionize your website traffic, user engagement, and – the ultimate goal – your company’s bottom line. Integration can turn your blog into a marketing tool, information hub, discussion board, and so much more. Next time you press “Publish,” make sure you follow it with smart integration.
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