Written by Simon Geraghty.

Back from some work at MeetSmarter and a nice break in Co. Kerry.  On the blog to date we’ve written about why you might want to blog to promote your business and how to plan your blog. This is the third part in our series on blogging and here we look at some effective ways to get your blog content out into the world.

1. Reach out to friends and influencers on social media: For starters make sure you have a social media presence, some followers and have been contributing to the fast paced, informative and often hilarious world that is Twitter. Form a connection with people, be helpful, polite and re-tweet or share other people’s posts and comments that you like.  Now you can ask your friends and reach out to influencers in your sector. For those you approach who you don’t know personally don’t take being ignored to heart, they get multiple requests a day to do this type of thing.
2. Make sure your business blog has social sharing buttons for the key social networks. You should have them for all the main networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), and make sure they are  Test your sharing buttons are properly configured and work as they should.
3. Find the best times for sharing: There are several articles written on this, see here and here, but the best way to really find out is to experiment; are your followers morning people, lunchtime, early afternoon or evening readers? Engage with people when they are most likely to be online and on social sites.
4. Email Marketing:  To get your content in front of people, particularly if they aren’t aware of your blog already, why not bring the content to them? Platforms such as MailChimp have free packages up to 2,000 subscribers and you can send up to 12,000 emails per month absolutely free.  MailChimp can also help you manage unsubscribe requests and change of e-mail addresses without you having to intervene. It will also help you track open rates, click-through rates and unsubscribe rates. Have a form to subscribe prominently displayed on the homepage of your blog (ours is coming soon as part of our exciting new re-design).
5. Commenting on other blogs & forums: Create a list of blogs and forums relevant to your business that you read on a regular basis and register with any forums in your sector. Look to answer questions and leave comments on articles on these. Make sure your answers and comments add value to an article or thread rather than merely praising the content and writer. When answering questions, be as helpful as you can, and provide answers that would be effective and helpful to all reading that question. Try to do this regularly and over time you should start to drive traffic to your site.
6. Add the URL of your blog in your email signature, on your business cards and any other printed material for your business. If no one knows you are blogging, then no one will read your blog. Put the blog URL everywhere you can – get creative! Showcase the blog address in your lobby/waiting room; print it on receipts; put it on donation forms; paste it to bulletin boards.
7. Learn from other successful bloggers: There are many sites who write about blogging itself, we like to read Copyblogger, Problogger, and various contributors at Tweakyourbiz.

Did you know?

1. Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world. This audience interact daily on the site, which is enough reason to invest time and promote your blog on Facebook. This can be done through a dedicated business page or even just using your personal page.

2. Twitter is not only a wonderful tool to promote your content but Google’s search engine also indexes twitter pages. So tweets relating to your website and blog affect your online presence. Be creative with your tweets, and headlines, add your keywords and link them to your website.

• Twitter Tip 1: For best results keep to 120 characters to allow re-tweets. If people are forced to rewrite your message to make it short enough to retweet, it reduces your retweets.
• Twitter Tip 2: Use URL shortening tools such as bit.ly , ow.ly and goo.gl among others will help shorten your links and also give good tracking information on clicks and location of readers.

Here’s a nice infographic that illustrates and builds on our seven points above: