I read a couple of interesting articles this week, and I’d like to share them with you. First, there’s this one from Brad Blackman called Write Blog Posts Faster with a Template or a Checklist. In it, Brad simply lists all the things he does when he creates a blog post. He then references this article, How to Easily Double Your Traffic from Social Media, in which Garrett Moon of Kissmetrics demonstrates how to create your own social media publication template for every time you publish a blog post.
They’re both great articles, and well worth a read. But they got me to thinking: I have a formula that I go through every time I write and publish a blog post, as well, so I thought I’d share my social media checklist with you.
I just want to say upfront that you can’t ever just share your blog post to social media once. I know some folks will be concerned that they will lose followers if they “overshare.” And you likely will. But there’s a sweet spot in there, and that’s the balance you’re striving for.
You see, Twitter, especially, moves way to fast to care if you are recycling content. The half life of a Tweet is, at maximum, around 15 minutes, so that gives you some time to play. Additionally, your audience is not all going to be online at the same time. Some will check their feeds in the early morning, some around lunch, and some at night. Some people live in different time zones around the world (hi, Kate!) and will be asleep when you are awake.
So, it pays to tweet about your post more than once.
It’s easy enough to do, especially with awesome management programs like Hootsuite or Buffer. The key, though is this: every time you share your blog post, do it in a slightly different way.
When I publish a blog post, I’ll share that post to twitter a minimum of 4 times:
- on publish
- later that same day
- the next day
- the next week
If your content is evergreen, you can share it again the next month, or the month after. I basically set up my feed so that I am sharing one new piece of content and one evergreen piece of content from my blog every day, interspersed with content I’m curating from the web that my audience will find interesting.
Every time I share it, though, I do it in a slightly different way. I’ll very seldom schedule up two identical tweets. Rather, I’ll ask a question that introduces a pain point with one, I’ll ask an opinion with another, or simply share the blog post title (which is hopefully intriguing) or a quote from the post.
In addition to Twitter, I share the post to Facebook, G+, and LinkedIn and Pinterest if it’s appropriate for those mediums. I share it individually to those networks. Yes, it takes a bit more time than if I used Hootsuite to share it to all, but I can tailor it to each individual network better that way.
That’s it! That’s my social sharing schedule.
What’s yours? Any tips you want to share?