Last week I was late posting this because the dog ate my homework. Actually, it was stuck on my iPad, and I had to retype because I knew it was killer content. I posted at 11 a.m. ET on Wednesday; always murder when hawking on Twitter because most are back in the throes of work.
What I quickly realized, as the post earned few comments or retweets, is the subject matter—highly specialized for professionals in public relations. To highlight, I wrote about GoPro, the media darling upstart wearable video camera company loved by extreme sports enthusiasts. My content was oriented to media relations for PR professionals interested in the elements they need for national media relations.
To promote this niche content pertaining to my profession, I had to pimp (aka push, promote, market) my post, and here’s how I did it:
>>Twitter. I scheduled about four tweets throughout the day, and invited a few close peeps to review. While they read for me and re-tweeted, comments were few. (As Erica Allison reminded me, don’t ever gauge the strength of a post on its comments, especially one oriented to a specialized topic.)
>>Triberr. I am a member of three tribes, and I’m always grateful when my tribe members retweet my blog posts. My post was tweeted by about 10 peeps to their networks. I’ve come to rely on the tribes to extend my content for me, and it all works together in correlation. Triberr is not a one-off social media strategy…it’s part and parcel of the overall strategy.
>>Buffer. I signed up for Buffer for the first time (after seeing many using it). Buffer scheduled my tweet at the most opportune time of the day when most are active in the stream. Very cool app…try this out.
>>Facebook Profile. My tweets to share the post were also sent over to Facebook at the same time. HootSuite is a wonderful platform with which to push content on multiple channels simultaneously.
>>Facebook Fan Page. I admit, my firm’s Facebook page is not frequently attended. I registered my blog with Networked Blogs which automatically posts my articles on my Facebook company page; however, this blog post warranted more of a push to folks in my community. I garnered a few likes from a few doing this.
>>Facebook Fan Page of GoPro. What did I have to lose? With 1.5 million likes in its community on Facebook, I shared my blog post on the GoPro wall. I congratulated them on all their publicity (in Inc. magazine) and shared my post. The result was a handful of likes on my post from the GoPro community.
>>Google+. As we’re all being required to engage more frequently with Google+ to influence search, you bet I shared my post there. I timed it for the morning before noon ET and then again in the afternoon. One was broadcast to all circles, and the other was in my PR and social media circles.
>>LinkedIn. I’ve not been engaging on LinkedIn as efficiently as I should. I posted my article on my own profile, and then I looked at the groups I was part of. There were two public relations groups I knew would be interested in this content, so I posted. I also joined another group, Social Media Marketers, and shared there because the story of GoPro as a social brand is compelling to anyone playing in social media marketing.
>>Blog Comments. That day, as I didn’t need to manage my own community as much, I sought other blogs to read and place comments. Those blogs with a commenting system that showed my current blog post brought in new readers to my site. (This is one good reason why you comment on others’ blogs…to help other communities become acquainted with you and yours.)
RESULTS
Clicky. What an amazing analytics tool. I love this dashboard, and I’m fully aware Google Analytics has spiffed up its user friendliness. For someone as anti-analytics as I am, Clicky is a good starter dashboard to get me acclimated to reading stats.
In so doing, I saw that today, hits are up 214% on the GoPro blog post. When I went back seven days to see traffic, I noticed that every single tactic I made above garnered hits to the post. People were stopping in the day of the post, the day after and through the weekend. Clicky showed me how long people stayed, what blog post they arrived at, and whether they opened on a link.
As I said, I’m terrible peeking under the covers to see what the back end is doing on my blog. When I do, I’m always amazed at the extent of data available to help drive my content choices. While I’m never going to let analytics drive my writings, I realize now that having some knowledge at the core of this experience is never a bad thing.
What tales from the rear can you add to this mix? Heh.
Well done, Jayme! I love the way you came back around full circle to share what happened as a result of those ‘share’ tactics. Love it. You’re also experiencing some of that ‘long tail of marketing’ phenom with that post and likely will for a while, depending on how you continue to share it or repurpose it.
Thanks for scoring first again! Another late blog post today, so I appreciate your comments. Long tail marketing … love that. Have a great Monday, Friend!
A lot of bloggers don’t get that. That “blogging” like a problogger doesn’t stop at the last word. A good blog post deserves to be pushed out there to be noticed, consumed, and raved about.
Engaging community is a lot of hard work, and I know you know that, Stan! Very appreciate you visiting today! Thanks!
G’Day Jayme,
Pretty useful stuff. Thanks
Leon
What? No smarm? Thank you! G’Day yourself, Friend!
Hi Jayme,
To reinforce one of you points: 1) I’m here today because I followed a comment you made on Adrienne Smith’s blog. 2) I found points in this blog post I hadn’t heard before and….3) I subscribed to your future posts. Now that’s the way it’s supposed to work! I am becoming a true believer in the power of commenting, both for community and for search rankings. I really believe that the most successful people online will be the ones who are producing great content and participate in communities online.
Michael. You are LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT! (It’s probably a good thing I can’t see your avatar, then, eh?!) Thank you so incredibly for sharing what just transpired between us. Not only is this a reinforcement for me to keep at it, I’m hoping it’s also that for others reading. I’m tickled you shared and likely naturally did what you may have in spite of this post…does that make any sense at all?
What a gift; thank you! So pleased to have you here.
Hey Jayme,
Pimping out a blog post can be tough at times! I came across your blog through Bill’s blog a long time back and here I am…
I am a part of this contest (see, I am pimping my post again!) and I am supposed to pimp it like crazy and I like what others are doing for me but yes, commenting is working like a charm. People actually come to the contest post and to my personal blog. It’s just a reflection of how wonderful the people actually are! Online community is a huge thing and the support it gives you is awesome! You just need to pimp it now and then and everything else falls right into place!
What you’re suggesting, Hajra, without really saying it is that it all takes serious commitment to keep up and alive. Right?
Absolutely. Even though the resources mentioned here are awesome and will help in the pimping process; you have to keep working on to throw your posts out there. Don’t you agree?
More than absolutely! Totally agree. I’m going to try to pay attention to my Clicky stats a teeny bit more and see why people are coming here and what’ they’re spending time on. I never wanted to do that, but sometimes writers need to know. Do you have Clicky yet? It’s awesome.
I don’t ; I think I will have to use it to pimp out my contest post…. how come I mention contest post so many times and you don’t go like “Hey, Hajra what contest post; I would love to comment” 😉 See, that is pimping…
Good grief, Charlie Brown. Do you need an invitation? We’re talking about pimping here! It’s like Share Your Blog Here! Gimme the blog post url, right NOW! LOL
Absolutely. Even though the resources mentioned here are awesome and will help in the pimping process; you have to keep working on to throw your posts out there. Don’t you agree?
What a great report Jayme and glad to see you had a new visitor that hopped over here from my place. Yey!”Hits are up 214%” Can I just say wow! Great job of promoting that post and I have to admit I love my tribes over at Triberr too. Also once you get your blogging community going all you have to do is reach out to them and ask them to share as well. The majority of them are happy to do so.Now, didn’t you say you were going to be doing a video last week? Huh, surely I didn’t just miss that one somewhere on here did I? Just checking…Great tips Jayme and thanks for taking us through everything you did. That’s always helpful.
Oh, No!!! Busted!!! Video this week, promise! Hah. With all the peeps and comments you’re getting on your blog, how the heck did you recall I said video. This site is soon to be relaunched; working on it now and video is going to be come a huge component. That will push me to always wear lipstick in the home office, eh? Thanks, Adrienne! Am enjoying all your excellent posts, too.
Hey, All…hit AdrienneSmith.net — you will not be disappointed.
Excellent post Soulati. Would add to this by finding communities who would also be interested in the content, target the influencers, comment on their pages or tweet them and push the content their way as well. Good posts often find themselves reblogged all over the blogosphere from this highly networked individuals, and it’s a great way to continue “pimp” your posts further!
Added an image of the reach of your blog in the Social Media Marketing community =] pulled from our application, eCairn. It’s currently just showing the people who frequently reblog/refer to your posts.
OK, woah. I am duly impressed. Time to blog. Would you mind terribly directing me to your site and also, may I get a jpg of this image? Or, perhaps I can pull it down from Disqus…there you have it…savvy, but always needing to learn one more thing.
Thank you for doing this and ahem, “pimping” your product…very effective. Of course, I’d have to say in my PR circles, that’s pitching, eh?
Appreciate this! Thank you!
No problem Soulati! Thanks for the kind words, you can check us out here: https://ecairn.com/
You should be able to pull the image form disqus, let me know if you want me to email you a bigger version or something. On that note, thought you might like this too! It’s a word cloud of all of your posts in the past 6 months. =P
OK, WOAH. You’re blowing me away…all these awesome tricks and tips and now a word cloud to boot. I always wanted one of those, and I enjoyed gazing at the variety of issues, topics, subjects, coverage, services, and more I deliver.
Can I say woah again? Thank you. Will be poking around over by you to see how to incorporate what you just did into a post this week. #RockHot. #ThatIsAll
OK, woah. I am duly impressed. Time to blog. Would you mind terribly directing me to your site and also, may I get a jpg of this image? Or, perhaps I can pull it down from Disqus…there you have it…savvy, but always needing to learn one more thing.
Thank you for doing this and ahem, “pimping” your product…very effective. Of course, I’d have to say in my PR circles, that’s pitching, eh?
Appreciate this! Thank you!
So, that is how all it works, huh? Maybe I should pay more attention…………
No. I like you just the way you are…!
No. I like you just the way you are…!
Great post, Jayme! I haven’t blogged in nearly a month as I’ve been burried. But I have to get one out this week and I’m going to pimp the heck out of it!!
You’ve been too busy building brand pages on Google+ for your new client La Finisteria (please help with the name of that Costa Rica hotel, OK?), and I see you busy on the Facebook channel, too. Don’t forget us; give us a post on promoting your new hotel on G+! You were pimping that awfully well the other day!! Thanks for stopping in in spite of the summer sun beckoning in your tropical paradise!
I can never forget Chicago! I still have frostbite scars! We’re waiting for you here in Paradise, Jayme, and we’re ready for when you decide to take a break. Do you sleep at all? LOL! And thanks for the plug on my new hotel client – Hotel La Finisterra (fee-nee-STARE-ah)! They’re up on G+ at https://goo.gl/PwcnO and on Twitter @la_finisterra! (pimp!). Your reservation is waiting. Pura vida! Chat soon! Keep ’em coming!
OMGosh. Tomorrow. I’m coming tomorrow. #ThatIsAll Paradise; hold my bed.
It is hard to be a pimp in the blogosphere. I love Buffer. It has been a great tool for me, so very effective. G+ is good too. Still like Twitter but it is often hard to break through the noise.
I just signed on to Buffer, but not sure I get it. Instead of tweeting on HootSuite, e.g., you load your tweets to Buffer and then it doles them out whenever?
It is supposed to send them at the best times for them to read and responded to.
this is ninja stuff my dear. How did you do it all? And here I am learning from you and I intend to steal and copy for all I am worth. Great ideas and well planned out strategy. More from this tactic I am sure will be coming. See you in April at the SoSlam
Hah! You can pull me from the audience to join you in front at SoSlam!!! Eager to hear what you have to say, and thanks for the lovely compliments, Billy!
I love this overview of your process Jayme. This is exactly the kind of thing to share.
I’ve been fond of Get Clicky for a good while now. I think it’s just easier to get a super quick snap shot of how things are going compared to the in-depth trawling that you can do in Google A.
I’m still not sure about Google+ and not particularly active there (yet). Did you see any major traction through that?
This is a great look at your process, Jayme! It’s funny – I’ve been meaning to write a similar post! I think many folks have an aversion to “pimping” their content because they don’t want to turn into a used car salesman. But, let’s be honest, if you don’t do that, how in the world will people ever find your stuff?! Don’t make people search for it. Go to them.
LOL, thanks, Girl! I rarely do this all the time; it’s just for specialized content I want more peeps to see. Again, when you’re writing for niche audiences of professionals, content may be seen, scanned and then ignored. Looking forward to seeing you in April!
I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this. I’ll write that on the blackboard about 400 times and still not get the memo; I need to do a better job of promoting myself, no doubt about it – that’s part of being social and blogging. And yet….
I’m not on the nets 24/7 with the tweets, G+ and LinkedIn updates; I’m active but a light user. So there’s that nagging feeling in my gut that this much self-promotion – without more OTHER-promotion – is too much for me. IDK it’s probably a lack of confidence as I’m almost always nervous when I hit publish; and it’s certainly not having enough time to find and share other things so I don’t over-pimp myself. Can I borrow a cup of balance? FWIW.
LOL. You’re funny. Trust me, this wasn’t planned and nor does it happen all the time, thank goodness. At the end of the day, I need some of what you got upstairs to pull me back to reality a bit more for balance. Who’s paying for my shoes and bags? It certainly isn’t another post on Google+!!
That’s the place that feels ‘obligatory’ to me. I probably will do more of my ‘too short/silly for a blog post’ on G+ and yet, I know I should ALSO pimp my own stuff there once in a while, engage w/ others a little more. As soon as we patent that 36-hour day, I’ll give it a go.
AGREEEEEE!!!!!