Where will your blog articles go? Why promotion strategy matters

Too often I’ve worked with marketers who want to start producing blog articles before they have a solid plan on how and where they’re going to be used.

It’s so easy to fall into this trap – you have a great idea and think it would work well as a blog post, so you go ahead and get it written. You figure you’ll be able to use it in various places; a post or two on social media, maybe in your next email newsletter, and surely if it’s published on your site it will be good for your search optimisation (SEO), right?

It’s all good thinking, and repurposing content across multiple channels is definitely something I recommend.

However, after years of seeing some content pieces thrive while others flop – from the shortest of blogs to the splashiest of videos – I’ve come to believe strongly that it’s best to choose one primary promotional tactic to focus on, right from the start. That way you can make sure you’re optimising your content to give you the biggest bang for buck possible where it counts, then tweak as necessary to repurpose it elsewhere.

I like to go even further back and ask, ‘does this even need to be a blog article?’ because the content might actually be better on a standard webpage, as a standalone social media post, blown up into a high-value video, or something else. But for now, let’s talk about blogs.

Below I’ve put together a quick overview of how blog articles differ for the main three channels:

• social media promotion

• search engine optimisation (SEO), and

• email newsletter inclusion.

The differences might be subtle, but they cover so many aspects of the production process, from the way you come up with the idea, to the writing style you use, to where you spend your budget, to the way you determine success.

Social-first: blog articles for social media promotion

If you’re writing a blog article to promote on social media, you’re likely planning to post a link to the article and expect readers to click through to your site to read it. This works well on Facebook and LinkedIn, and plenty of brands do it on Instagram through ‘link in bio’ tools. Especially if you’re using Facebook, expect to pay for the privilege of showing up in your target audience’s feeds. This means setting aside a portion of your budget for promotion.

To grab your audience’s attention mid-scroll, your blog article’s header had better be undeniably surprising and/or useful to entice them to read more. It’s important that your header accurately describes the content and gives enough information so readers know what to expect. But don’t let SEO keywords crush your creativity here – they’re not the priority for this channel.

Because creativity is the key to getting noticed in social media, I think the best way to plan social-first blog articles is in regular brainstorm sessions with support from a yearly events calendar.

Personally, I don’t think it’s worth the time and effort to produce a social-first blog article for content marketing purposes that has relevance of less than one week. The traffic to your article will build as you continue to spend money promoting it, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get some shares and maybe even ‘go viral’.

Don’t be surprised, either, when your stats show most visitors leaving your website after viewing one article. They want to get back to scrolling social media.

Search-first: blog articles for search engine optimisation (SEO)

Your audience arriving through Google search is in a completely different mindset to those who come from social media. They’ve searched for something specific – often a question they want an answer to – and they’ve clicked on your article hoping you can give them what they’re looking for.

Visitors from Google tend to be more engaged with your website than those from elsewhere, staying on it for longer, reading your content in full, and clicking through to read more on your other pages. But don’t forget that in general, digital readers are time-poor and lazy, so make it as easy as possible for them. Subheadings and bullet points are a must, but it’s also important to choose words that accurately describe your content. Leave the poetic subheadings at the door when you’re prioritising SEO – best practice keyword use should be your focus here.

Speaking of which, search-first blog article ideas should start with keyword research, because there’s no point writing an SEO article based on a topic nobody is searching for. I prefer to plan out search-first content in a batch, partly to make the keyword research more efficient. You’ll need to allocate some budget to this stage, whether you’re doing it in-house, through an SEO agency or with a copywriter like me who offers this specialised skillset.

Google can take a while – sometimes up to six months – before it decides your content is valuable enough to present highly on its search results pages. But the flipside of that is once you start ranking highly, your (free!) traffic to that page is likely to remain steady for some time. This is why it’s best for your articles to be as evergreen as possible; I like them to hold relevance for at least a year.

Email-first: blog articles for email newsletter inclusion

Like on social media, when you're using an email newsletter to get readers to your articles, your main weapon is an irresistible header to entice them to click through.

But even more important when focusing on email is to choose a topic that’s hyper-relevant to your audience’s interests. If you’re building up a following of subscribers who know, like and trust your brand, it’s important to really understand them so you can target your content specifically. That means reviewing the data available to you that builds up a picture of your audience, and maybe even conducting a poll or survey now and then.

While some email readers can be considered loyal, it’s important not to take their attention for granted. Most won’t open every one of your emails, and if you’re posting links to multiple blog articles in one send, you can expect a lot of people to choose just one or two to click through to read.

On a related note, to make sure your email design is user-friendly, attractive and on-brand, consider investing some of your budget with a designer who can help your content pop.

If you’re writing content specifically for email newsletter inclusion, I don’t recommend batch-producing this ahead of time. Best to follow a publishing cycle in-line with each newsletter send, so you can base future content decisions on previous newsletters’ performance and stay up-to-date with current events.

Unless your articles are also relevant to a secondary channel (which I usually recommend, by the way), it’s likely your traffic to any particular blog article will peak on the day of email send then drop off shortly afterwards. The flipside of this is, unlike with other channels you can consider writing content that will only hold relevance for as little as one day.

A quick recap

As you can see, there can be a lot of variation to the finished product depending on your choice of approach. Here’s a quick reminder:

• Social-first articles should cover surprising or irresistibly useful topics, with creative headers to attract clicks. Expect most readers to return to scrolling after reading, rather than exploring your site.

• Search-first articles should detail topics chosen from keyword research and follow best practice keyword use and content structure. Expect traffic to take a few months to build up until your page ranks in Google search results.

• Email-first articles should be highly relevant to your subscriber audience and have enticing, descriptive headers. Expect a spike in traffic post-send that drops off shortly afterwards.

Many of the big brands’ blog websites that I’ve worked on house a combination of two or all three of these different types of content. The distinctions aren’t always obvious to the untrained eye, but my experience tells me they can make all the difference to your content’s success.