If your company has a blog, you’re already ahead of the game. When done right, blogs can serve as absolutely invaluable pieces of a comprehensive, strategic content marketing strategy.
Blogs help position your company as knowledgeable experts within your industry and, when written well, they convert casual readers into prospects and customers.
Yes, sounds perfect. And easy. Right? Of course it does. All sweeping online marketing recommendations like “Have a blog!” sound easy. They’re not, though.
For most businesses, it’s not enough to write a great blog post and then kick back, waiting for traffic and business to roll in. Unless you already have a loyal following of blog subscribers or a very high-traffic site, that blog content on which your business has spent so much time (or money) may only get noticed with a bit of elbow-grease and promotion.
While a practically infinite number of articles have been written on how to promote your blog posts on social media, we recommend you consider an alternative means of promotion for your very best posts.
Among the many ways to get extra eyeballs on your blog content, one potentially powerful way is to ask for them.
This technique is especially powerful when you quote or link to others’ articles within your posts. Whenever you do this, reach out to those resources, let them know you cited them, and request their feedback on your post.
This reaching out shows the original writer you view him as an expert and value what he had to say on the topic. Each time you do this, there exists the potential to boost goodwill, networking and relationship building, external links to your blog posts from the reputable source, promotion of your blog post by the reputable source, and promotion to the source’s readership/followers/customers.
To increase the chances of extending your reach even more (instead of just hoping your source will promote you), you can go one step further and, again, ask.
Ask your expert source to share your post with his own audience. This (smart) idea may not even cross his mind if you don’t ask.
If he does share, it helps your piece gain more legs while further positioning him as an expert. It helps you by growing your readership and it makes the expert look really good that others are citing him. It’s a solid win-win (assuming, of course, the expert isn’t already a national figure receiving citations on a daily basis already. Pro tip: these suggestions likely won’t work if you’re citing and reaching out to people like Tony Robbins or Oprah. Promoting your post isn’t going to be a win for them).
Research your resource’s email address, LinkedIn profile and/or Twitter handle and contact them directly.
Your note to the resource may look something like the sample below.
(Important note before you read the message: we recommend you don’t just copy and paste this text without thoughtful customization and personalization. Customization and personalization are key when reaching out to people—if your emails sounds stock, it’s getting deleted, probably instantly. The email needs to reflect your personality, your writing style, and be written in a way that sounds like you. Experts like the ones you’ll be reaching out to often receive many of these types of emails per week, and the generic ones get ignored. Be genuine, this sample outreach message is just a starting point for you to run with and tweak.)
Good afternoon Jim,
I recently read your post (URL here) and noticed (insert at least two very specific comments about what you REALLY liked about the post and why you found it interesting enough to quote. The goal here is to be as non-generic as possible.)
I was so impressed with your post, in fact, that I mentioned your post (or quoted you, whatever is appropriate) to my blog followers in a recent an article I wrote. If you have have any thoughts or feedback on my story, or would like anything changed, let me know. I want to make sure our mention of you is something that you’re happy with. (Notice what we did there; we made this all about making THEM happy, not making it about us.)
Sometimes when we cite experts like yourself in our blog posts, they enjoy mentioning the citations to their own blog readers, as it shows how others in the industry see them as a valuable resource and true expert. Sometimes they say that our blog posts are also valuable for your readers. (Notice what we did there: we provided social proof and shared what others like them are doing.) If your readers would find our content valuable, we won’t say no to a mention or link to our post.
Best wishes,
Your name and contact info
Give us a ring today at (720) 295-1003 to discuss expert content strategy .