Unlike some bloggers I know, it takes me quite a bit of time to write a blog post. I tend to slave over my blog post with research, creation of graphics, and gathering links. I was often frustrated when I saw other bloggers be able to churn out multiple blog posts a week with little effort. But the more I thought about this, I began to wonder if it's actually a good thing. Pat Kitano then confirmed this at Inman Connect when he talked about focusing on the quality instead of the quantity of blog post.
I tend to agree. The internet is all about information overload. We even see this on ActiveRain. With now more than 100,000 subscribers, it's getting more and more difficult to have blog posts stand out from the crowd. Instead of more content, I think it's time we shift to refining the quality of the content and then focus on getting that content to as many eyeballs as possible through automated content distribution.
Extending Your Blog Reach
If I am going to take the time to write a blog post, it's important that I get the most "mileage" of out my blog post. After all, it's all about return on investment. Right? That's where I think automated content distribution can help rocket the return you receive in your blogging investment.
Take the Ron Popeil Approach
I love automation. In fact, everyone in the office laughs at me because one of my most quoted lines is "Set it, and forget it!" If something in the office has to be done more than once, I am typically asking my programmer how we can write a script to automate that process. I think it's important to take this same approach with blogging. Now I realize that it's not possible to automate actually writing a blog post. (Don't we all wish!) However, it is quite easy to automate the distribution of your blog to reach more eyeballs.
What Happens When I Click Publish
Content distribution may be different for different people. But here is a quick example of what happens (automatically) when I hit the publish button on my blog...
- Blog Post title automatically appears on the Dakno Home page (that links to the blog post)
- Headline and link to the blog post appears on my staff page on the Dakno website (Thanks to the AgentBackdoor software)
- Twitter post automatically goes out notifying my Twitter followers that I just posted a link (Yup, this can automatically happen without you having to even login to Twitter!)
- New blog post notification populates to my FriendFeed account
- New blog post notification on MyBlogLog profile
- New comment on my Facebook profile page letting people know that I just wrote another blog post.
- Email Blast to my email based Subscriber list with the content of the post
- Link to the new blog post added in the sidebar of my ActiveRain Blog
Why is This so Effective?
By distributing your content to different sources, you are able to reach otherwise untapped market segments. For example, I may have one group of contacts that frequent Facebook. While another audience may be less tech-savvy and prefer to receive my updates via email. At the other end of the spectrum are those who would much rather receive a "tweet" than yet another email in their inbox. However, once automated content distribution is in place, I am now able to reach all of these different market segments and only have to originate the content from one source – my blog!
I believe that blogging can be even more effective as we begin to focus on quality content and then use automated distribution channels to extend the reach of that quality content to as many readers as possible.
To Your Success,
Brad Carroll
P.S. Ready to learn more about how to make your blogging efforts even more effective? Check out our 8 Week Blogging Webinar – BloggingBootcamp. ActiveRain members receive an exclusive $50 discount. Hurry, our first session starts Thursday August 14th. Sign Up Now.
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