Promoting - are we doing our blogs justice?
Hey Folks,
I watched a video from a leading marketer who said that they spend 20% of their time writing content and the remaining 80% of the time promoting it. Think about it, that's an enormous amount of time spent only on endorsing the blog.
This really made me stop and think about how much effort I invest in promoting my blogs; I certainly don't spend that long, that's for sure. In fact, if you swapped the percentages around (80% writing a blog and 20% promoting it), it'd probably reflect more accurately how I allocate my time.
I've always had an internal struggle with how to delegate my time, and it's evident in my previous blog post too, especially when time is short.
With that in mind, I'd like to put the question to you and ask if you think it's reasonable/advisable to use 20% of the time writing content and 80% of the time promoting it. Also, how long do YOU spend promoting content in relation to writing it?
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Finding valuable keywords, Researching and writing high quality content takes time if you don’t have hired writer (s).
It is equally important to promote. People spend money to advertise in different forums. One can do that.
WA training teaches to get organic traffic mostly. However, they also teach you run ads to gain more traffic, leads and conversions Sometimes spending few bucks can help you get leads and conversions.
You need to do both.
I would opt to do more promotions when I have written many good posts. How many, I am not sure today.
Hi there,
That's an excellent point, I used a Pinterest ad campaign myself to help with promotion, it certainly didn't take 80% of my time to do it though. Some smart approaches can help to promote content in a time-efficient manner.
It's probably based on traffic and ranking too, if you have decent traffic coming to your site and ranking on page 1/2, I'd imagine that you can spend more time promoting then.
Thanks,
Sharon
I do not use 80% promoting my blog. I mean I put it on Facebook, I have business page. I also have an business page for pinterest. So all my articles I pin there, the business page for Facebook. I never timed myself. I also have a full time job. Good question. Alicia
Hey Alicia,
I'm in a similar boat, it's difficult finding time for everything, so prioritising actions and making the most of available time is crucial to success!
Thanks for your feedback and insights.
Sharon
Hi Sharon,
You know you'll never get a straight answer out of me, so my answer is YES and NO.
Okay, first things first, the main method of online marketing we're taught at WA is blogging and SEO.
The 2 main requirements of this type of online marketing is.
- Lots and lots and lots of content
- Time
Using the methods that we are mainly taught here our main aim should be to produce as much (quality) content as possible.
This gives us far more opppurtunities to rank in the search engines, e.g. you have 10 articles on your site and you only have 10 opportunities to rank (well it's actually more, but I don't want to confuse matters here, but suffice to say I have articles that rank for anywhere between 10-40 different keywords), but if you have 300 articles on your site you have 300 opportunities to rank.
So, if your main aim is to rank in the search engines then your most important task is to keep writing. And I'm not talking 30, 40, 50 articles either. This is a process that has no specific "end date", but my aim would be in the hundreds (and later on the thousands).
When it comes to promoting your content there are a couple of schools of thought.
You can promote your articles via other platforms, e.g. social media, forums, Q&A sites, member's groups, etc. in order to drive traffic to them via that medium, or in the hope that your articles are shared by others.
This will typically lead to people linking back to your article, which in turn can help them to rank higher in the search engines (back to SEO again).
I would say the best method is to do both, but your initial aim should be to get as much newsworthy content on your site first.
A very, very crude business plan would be:
Write 150-200 articles as quickly as you can without allowing the quality to suffer.
Someone who knows their niche extremely well, has lots of time on their hands, etc. may be able to achieve this in a month or two.
Others may take 5-6 months to reach this level, whereas for most this will typically be the 1-2 year mark.
However, as time goes by, and you produce more content, and your website gains more trust in the eyes of the search engines, as long as your keyword research is on-point, many of your articles will start ranking and bringing in traffic.
Let's say by 5 months you have written 50 articles and about 10 of these are receiving regular traffic, you could then concentrate your efforts on promoting these 10 articles.
Your aim is to "push" them higher in the search engines, and as they already seem to be popular with readers, you can now start promoting them on other platforms to get more readers.
At the same time you still continue writing fresh content.
You haven't "forgotten" about promoting the other 40 articles on your site, they are just taking longer to get noticed by the search engines, so you can come back to these at a later date.
Keep writing, see what's popular, promote those, keep writing, see what's popular, promote...
Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat
I did say it was a very crude business plan, but hopefully you get my point.
Partha
Hi Partha,
I think I can agree with everything that you've referred to in this post. Some really good pointers here that are great to hear as a reminder of the journey we are on. It's no quick money game trip that we are travelling, and as you alluded to, we can be waiting years for real success.
Based on what you and others have commented, I feel reassured that the current steps I'm taking to achieve success with my site are along the correct lines, i.e. writing as much low hanging fruit in terms of keywords and creating as much quality content as I can.
I think I'm past the raves for now lol.
My current mantra is Eat, Sleep, Write, Repeat
Thanks for such an insightful comment, really brings it home what we should be doing and certainly put things into perspective for me.
Sharon
Oh dear God Sharon, my raving days are well behind me, LOL.
Yes, you're following the right path, but what you'll find is that you'll go through this feeling of frustration and uncertainty every 3-4 months, it's just natural.
"Where's my traffic, where's my sales, am I doing the right thing, etc."
I have known people completely split up the way they do things.
An example would be for the first 20 weeks I am going to write 5 articles a week without fail, BUT only publish 4 of these articles.
Just keep writing and publishing and nothing else.
At week 20 your website has 80 articles and you also have 20 "spare" articles.
You now continue to publish 4 articles a week for the next 5 weeks, but for that 5 weeks you solely concentrate on promotion, and don't write any additional content for your site.
5 weeks of non-stop FB, Twitter, and Pinterest.
5 weeks of finding and commenting on blogs in your niche
5 weeks of joining relevant groups in your niche and getting involved.
5 weeks of Quora, Reddit, and forums answering questions, building yourself as an expert, and occasionally linking back to your content.
There's so many different ways to go about it, but without a solid base (loads of content first and foremost) you typically having nothing to "promote".
Partha
Great template for a business strategy, Partha.
It seems that all of us who are commenting are thinking the same way. I suppose the 80/20 rule that you reference, Sharon, may have more to do with an established website with maybe a thousand posts or more. At that point, I would think that you'll shift your priority to promoting the site rather than adding to it. It seems that most of us at WA are more in the beginning/growth stage of our websites so reversing those numbers would be more appropriate. While I am spending some time promoting my sites, I do restrict it so that it doesn't cut into my writing time. So I'm maybe in the 10/90 camp of promoting time/writing time. And I still have so far to go!
Great question, Sharon!
Kerry
I feel like you're reading my mind when you wrote that. That uncertainty definitely comes in waves. That sounds like a great technique, although as a part-timer here, I'd never get that quantity of posts, but I could certainly follow the approach to a smaller scale.
Sharon
Hey Kerry,
That is very true, I doubt many of us are at a stage where we can loosen the belt and settle on promoting our content over creating it.
I'm probably the 20/80 approach of promoting/creating content. Based on the feedback, I probably won't change that either.
Thanks for your input!
Sharon
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There's no right or wrong way to do it. Whether you write or promote 80% it is the same thing if you do your keyword research and competition analysis. The only difference is that your existing content will get more visibility if your promote more, and more posts will get indexed and appear for additional keywords if you publish more posts. If you publish more posts it will increase your blog's visibility in Google's eyes and it may result in it directing more traffic to it.
Hi there,
Yes, that is true, all valid points! It's interesting to see that most people who commented on this have flipped the ratio and spend 20% of their time promoting, not 80%.
Thanks for the comment,
Sharon