Content distribution

You’ve worked hard to create meaningful, diverse content and share your stories. Now it’s time to spread the word and find your readers. The SEO basics lesson covers some tips on optimizing your blog’s SEO to help improve its visibility to search engines. Now we’ll focus on other ways to promote your blog.

If you’re already on a social media platform, great! WordPress.com has built-in tools to help automate your social media sharing so that you only have to worry about writing your content.

To connect your blog to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Tumblr, follow the instructions on this support page. That will guide you through the steps to connect your social account to your blog so that every time you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on your social feed.

Using networks well means more than just publicizing your posts; if that’s all you’re doing, you’re not really making the most of your social connections. Social networks are about creating a sense of community: sharing related content, and engaging with your audience. Here are a few ideas:

Share other bloggers’ posts — there’s nothing like sharing the love, and promoting others’ good work ultimately brings people to you too.
Share humorous, interesting, or provocative links — Your networks become valuable when you curate, helping fans weed through the swampland of the internet to find the goodies.
Ask questions — If there’s one thing people enjoy doing on the internet, it’s sharing opinions. Asking questions is a good way to get feedback on what your readers are interested in.
Share status updates — Are you on round three of the DIY project you’re planning to blog next week? Are you headed to the movies to see the next film you’ll review? Did you just finish a major project? Share blog-related glimpses into your life to build a personal connection with readers.

Here are some bonus tips to help integrate your blog content seamlessly into your social communities:

Choose the right channels. The best social network for your blog is going to be the one in which you’re spending most of your time. Hate Facebook but love Twitter? Then, by all means, connect your blog to Twitter and call it a day. Don’t waste your energy trying to share your content with all the major social networks. Instead, focus on one or two that you find most engaging and fun, then spend the majority of your creative time on actually creating content and connecting with your community.

Of course, it does help to understand the foundation of each platform. Some things are better shared on some platforms than others.

Expand this section for a great diagram to study and understand each platform:

Add visuals to your posts. This is where your posts’ featured images come in handy. Be mindful of the featured images you use and make sure that they’re interesting enough to catch the eye and encourage someone to click through to your post. Even if photos aren’t a focus of your blog, utilize the free Pexels photo library to ensure that you’re meeting the visual needs of the social platforms you’re distributing your content to.

Encourage the click with your text. Want someone to actually click on the link you shared in your tweet or Tumblr post? Then say so. I wrote about my last day at school before we were all sent home after lockdown. Click here to read all about it.

Use #hashtags. Keep it simple, and avoid hijacking popular hashtags that aren’t related to your blog post topic at all.

Reshare old content when relevant. Social media is a great way to resurface old-but-evergreen posts from your archives, especially if the topic is related to a current event or milestone.

Make your content easy to share. Be sure to add Like and sharing buttons at the end of every blog post. Learn how to do that using the instructions on this support page.

Sharing Buttons are an easy way to encourage readers to share your posts without being pushy. They’re just there at the bottom of a post, making themselves available, but being cool about it. Note that you can customize the text that appears above the sharing buttons. One site’s call to action says, “Tell your friends! Seriously. Tell them. Now.” Use a call to action that reflects your site’s personality and brand.

Blog subscriptions

By default, every WordPress.com blog includes a feature that lets people follow their favorite blogs. As long as your Privacy Settings are set to Public, then anyone can subscribe to be notified every time you publish a new post. (Not sure how to configure your privacy? Check out this support page.)

In the bottom-right corner of most WordPress.com sites is the Follow button. If a follower is also a WordPress.com user, they can click on that button to automatically follow the blog. New posts will be added to that user’s Reader feed.

Non-WordPress.com users who click on that button will be prompted to enter their email address so that they can receive notifications each time you publish a post.

Note: This feature doesn’t display on WordPress.com sites that have custom themes or plugins installed, and it’s not a feature of self-hosted WordPress sites.

Learning Action

For this assignment, integrate your blog to your favorite social network(s) to seamlessly and automatically share and promote your posts to your greater online communities.

Connect your blog to your favorite social network. Don’t currently have an account at a social network? Don’t worry about it, this is totally optional! If and when you do decide to experiment with social media, you can always activate this later.
If you haven’t already, add social sharing buttons to your posts to make it easy for your followers and readers to share your content to their social communities.

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