Believe me, I wish we could just publish an article and then move on. But no, we can't rely on the internet to just magically do its thing.
Turns out, if you actually want people to read your stuff, hitting publish is only the beginning.
After you publish you'll want to make your followers aware that you have a new post by interlinking it to old articles, putting it out on social media, and emailing your list. Then you can use your new article to find new followers by looking for backlinks and repurposing it into new content.
Interlink it
Internal links (links from one of your articles to another) are an important part of your articles. They serve several purposes, one of which is that they increase pageviews.
But the trouble with internal links is that you can't link to an article that hasn't been published yet. So if you aren't careful, internal links will only take your reader back in time.
For example, if they click on a link in an article you published today it will take them to an article you published last March. But then in the March article are only links to articles published in December — and so on. Continually taking the reader back further and further in time.
Here's a visual of what I'm talking about. The arrows represent links.
So, there is a link from the article that published on January 1st linking to an article that had published a few months prior, in September. Then September links to a post from June and well as March — and so on.
This can cause a few problems.
For one, it ends up with a bad user experience — eventually they will come across something that is outdated.
Two, it doesn't give your new stuff a fighting chance. Old articles will have way more links than new ones since they have been available for internal linking for so much longer.
Also, older articles often get more traffic than new ones since they may be ranking, or linked to from other sites, or have social media posts still out there traveling the internet. If they don't link to your new stuff then it's difficult for readers to find your most recent content.
We fix this by taking a few minutes after an article has published and placing internal links in old articles that point to our new article.
Now you can see that the post from March and the post from September now link to our brand new article. And you can see that by taking the time to interlink the new articles into old stuff, the reader can travel forward in time.
They can come across an article in from last January and still find our new stuff.
Now the reader can travel backward and forward in time. They can read an article that was published in March and it could have a link to an article that was published in June.
It also gives us a chance to replace some of the older links with newer, fresher ones.
Push on Social Media
Once your article is live you'll want to let your followers know. Create images in Canva for Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and any other social media channels you use.
If you have a social media scheduler like Tailwind or Social Bee take a moment and create and schedule your social media messages for each platform.
I love schedulers because you can set your social media posts in batches — sitting down once a week or once a month and scheduling out everything that is coming up.
Bonus points if your scheduler automatically reuses old social media posts. That means even less work for you and more love for your content.
Tailwind
I use Tailwind for scheduling Pinterest and Instagram. I love it for Pinterest because it's easy to use and you can schedule your posts to go out over and over without having to do anything extra through the “smart loop” option. But best of all, you get to join the Tailwind Tribes.
Tailwind Tribes are what I think of as “pinning circles”. You pin your content in them and so do the other members, then use the content in the Tribe to fill your Pinterest schedule. Your stuff will get repins from the group and you have plenty of stuff ready for your own queue as well.
Social Bee
I use Social Bee to schedule my Facebook and LinkedIn posts. I love it because it will continually repurpose your existing messages. You can set it to run through a queue automatically over and over. Plus you can create multiple messages for the same post, so your content doesn't get stale.
Let's say, you have it set to publish to your Facebook page on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And you have set a specific queue where you keep best stuff and it's set to run through this queue over and over.
If you have 20 posts in there, each with three different social media messages — that's 60 unique posts. It won't begin to repeat any one post for 20 weeks.
Related: Best Time to Publish a Blog Post
Email Your List
Telling your email list about a new blog post is a great way to interact with your list.
Should you send out a new email blast every time you publish something new? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on how often you publish.
If you publish once a week or less, then yes, I think it's fine to send out an email letting people know you have a new article up. If you publish more than once per week, I think one weekly email about your new content is fine.
It's not uncommon for a weekly email to start with some personal information or a story and then lead into the new content on your site with links over to the articles.
As your list grows, your highest traffic days will likely be the day you send out this email.
Add it to Your Welcome Sequence
A welcome sequence is a set of emails that go out automatically when someone signs up for your list. If you don't have this, you should!
Another way to use your new content in email is to add it to your welcome sequence. You don't want to add every single article but if it's something special, or it replaces an article that isn't as good as your new one, then it makes sense.
It's something to keep in mind.
ConvertKit
I love ConvertKit for sending emails. ConvertKit makes it very easy to segment your subscribers so you are only sending people things they have shown interest in. It also allows for some pretty sophisticated funnels that you can use to send your welcome sequences or other automatic email funnels.
Related: What you Need to Know Before Starting an Email List
Look for Backlinks
So much of SEO is about backlinks. If you've been following my advice then you are well versed in the other blogs in your niche.
As you read other blogs keep an eye out for places where you can ask for a backlink. You're looking for articles that are similar in topic but don't go into depth in the area of your particular article.
For example, if I came across an article that talked about publishing a blog post and only quickly mentioned what to do after it went live I'd reach out and let the author know about this article. It would be a value add to their article and a link for me.
If you reach out to other bloggers asking for a link, keep it short and relevant. Also, keep the focus on them and how adding this link to their article will help their reader and improve the quality of their article.
Related: How to Write a Successful HARO Pitch
Repurpose it
You've taken the time to write an amazing article why not get the most mileage possible out of that information?
If you are comfortable making videos — or want to become comfortable — you can make a video going over the same content as in the article. You've already done all the hard work of collecting and organizing the information.
Or you could cut it down into it's elements and create a series of videos. If they are short enough you could even put them out onto social media for additional exposure.
If video is too scary you can do a podcast. It's the same theory as video but you'll just have the audio version instead. Again, you've already done the hard part. So why not repurpose it for a podcast?
At the very least, break the information up into chunks and use it on social media.
Summary
Publishing an article is just the beginning of its life. Interlinking, social media, and emailing your list will help show off your new post to your followers.
Getting backlinks and repurposing the article will help the article find a new audience and grow your following.
