12 Places to Share your Blog Post to Reach more Customers

The day has arrived.  Time to share your blog post with the world. 

You chose the perfect idea, poured your heart and soul into writing it (there’s even links to your shop’s products).  It’s time to hit PUBLISH!

Click.

You wait.  And you wait.  All you hear are crickets.  And more crickets. 

Now, you start thinking that this blogging thing is a waste of time.  Nobody’s reading my posts any way. 

How am I ever going to build my business using blogging as my marketing strategy when NOONE is even reading my blog posts?

Actually, you’re right.  Blogging is a waste of time as a tool to grow your business if you’re just going to sit there.  We no longer live in a world where if you build it, they will come.

Turns out that you need to share your blog post and promote it just like you do your products.

And if you’ve written your blog post correctly, then you’ve featured your products in a unique way.  So taking the time to share your blog post is just like spending time promoting your products.  It’s even more effective because you’re sharing your brand, content and products all in one.

Once you get passed the joy of hitting the publish button (it feels good, doesn’t it?), you need to think about all of the places you can share your blog post.  Just hitting publish isn’t enough.  If you don’t already have a solid audience that visits your blog regularly, you’ll most likely hear a lot of quiet.

Don’t worry.  That’s normal.  It takes awhile to get a blog audience growing.

But remember, unlike a traditional blogger, your blogging goal isn’t to just increase traffic.  That would be nice too, but you have products to sell. 

The goal for your shop’s blog is to make your job of selling easier.  Your blog content should share your products more naturally and effectively. 

In order for potential customers to find your blogs post, you have to share them.  Or no one is going to visit.

Also, remember that your blog is just one place for your audience to find your content.  Content is everywhere these days and people discover it in lots of different places.

Your job is to make your content accessible.  Not everyone will stop by your shop’s blog hoping that you’ve published a new post.  You need to reach out to them by sharing your blog post and telling them about your content.

By consistently sharing content for your business, you increase the likelihood that potential customers will find you.

The next step after you publish your blog post is to decide where to share it.  You want to choose platforms where your audience is most active.

Think about it.  You decide to share your blog post on Twitter 5 times a day for the next two weeks.  During those two weeks, you realize that no one is reading your blog post or clicking over.  It turns out your audience hates Twitter and avoids it because it’s overwhelming.

Spending time sharing your blog post on Twitter didn’t make a lot of sense.  It wasn’t really that productive and didn’t result in traffic or sales.  

Before sharing your blog post in any of the places below, take time to figure out where your potential customers hang out.  Cultivate a community in these places first.  Spend time sharing, engaging and creating content specific to the social media network.

Over time, you will build trust with this specific audience.  Then, when you are ready to share your blog post, your content won’t fall on deaf ears.

Instead, you will have an excited audience whose cheering you on and ready to engage with your content.

Here are 12 places to share your blog post after you hit publish.  Don’t feel like you have to choose all of them.  Start with one or two and grow your promotion efforts from there.

Your Business Facebook Page

Every week, after I publish my new blog post, I share it first on my business Facebook page on same date and time.  My audience knows to check this place first to see my latest content and free printables.

Write a creative post sharing your latest content and share on Facebook.  You will have access to over 2 billion monthly users. 

If you want to get in front of even more of your audience (or even new people), consider boosting your post.  Although this costs money, it’s a strategic way to reach more people faster.

Pinterest

Pinterest is one of my favorite places to share my blog post after I publish it.  Mainly because it’s where I see the biggest traffic drive over the longest period of time.

The other great thing about Pinterest is that unlike Facebook where you’re sharing directly to your audience, on Pinterest you’re sharing to your audience AND potential customers.  Many of them have probably never heard of you or your products.

And it’s all organic sharing (unless you want to invest in Pinterest ads).  By integrating your product into your blog post, Pinterest users are getting the information they’re looking for and an introduction to your business.

But Pinterest can take a lot of time to manage.  Not everyone has extra hours in their day to find new pins and repin consistently.

Enter Tailwind.  This amazing Pinterest scheduling tool takes the stress out of sharing on Pinterest.  Use the tool to schedule your blog posts throughout the week to your Pinterest boards and group boards.

It’s a great way to share content continuously without having to put in more time and effort.

Tailwind Tribes

As much as I love Pinterest group boards, they have some problems.  I’ve found many of them aren’t as active as they used to be.  Members aren’t going on them continuously to post new content and share the content already on them.

It kind of defeats the purpose.  I think the reason why, though, is because Tailwind introduced an even better tool – Tailwind Tribes.

A Tailwind tribe is a group of people on Tailwind sharing and repinning content in a specific niche.  You can join a tribe easily by applying or just clicking accept.

Tailwind let’s you automatically join 5 tribes.  But if you find them addictive like I did, you can add a Power Up for $60 a year.  This adds more tribes and pin shares to your account, resulting in a bigger reach.

When you use Tailwind tribes, be sure to follow the rules for each tribe.  You can share your content to the tribe – and should be – but also share others’ content.

In order to be a good tribe member, I schedule the tribe’s content weekly on my Pinterest boards.  It’s a great place to find fresh content with working links that my audience will love.  You can find more information about using Tailwind tribes to grow your business here.

Linked In

I’ve just started using Linked In again and I’m enjoying finding old professional contacts on the platform.  It also can be an effective way to share your blog post with professional contacts.

If you write relevant content that you think connections on Linked In will be interested in, add them to the Activity or Post section of your feed.  You can also share your content in Linked In Groups, expanding your potential to find new customers.

Twitter

I will admit right away that I don’t have a love affair with Twitter.  Although there are scheduling tools that you can use, I find the Twitter platform way too chaotic to keep up with.  Your tweet only lasts a few minutes and then it’s gone forever.

But some businesses are very successful using Twitter and find their audience easily there.  (My audience doesn’t seem to have time for this platform either.)

If this is the case, then be sure your share your blog post on Twitter.  You will need to tweet the link multiple times a day to have an impact on traffic. Check out these guidelines to posting on Twitter.

Instagram

Instagram is similar to Twitter.  Either your audience hangs out there or they don’t.

Before spending a lot of time building up this social media platform, make sure your audience is there first.  You’d hate to invest time on a platform where your audience isn’t.

Instagram is also difficult because you can’t share a blog post link directly in your Instagram post.  You might wonder what the point is to posting on Instagram when you can’t invite your audience to click over.

Like most things, though, there are work arounds.

You can create an Instagram photo with a “quote” from your latest blog post.  Then, add the blog post link to your bio page.  Let viewers know that the link is there in your Instagram post text.

I do something similar for my shop’s DIY and party posts, but with photos.  I share a photo from the blog post to create interest and then link to the post in my bio. 

If you don’t want to keep updating the link, another idea is to create an Instagram links page for your blog.  You can keep all of your Instagram post links on the page and just add a link to the main page in your Instagram bio.  This way your Instagram users can find all of the blog posts you’ve share over time.  

You can also add a link to your newest blog post in Instagram stories.  Instagram stories is a great tool for adding photos, videos and live content. Your posts stay up for 24 hours, giving them more potential to reach your audience.

As of today, you need 10,000 followers to add a link through Instagram stories.  But the number used to be 1 million, so it is going down.

If you don’t have 10,000 followers and this is a feature that you’d like to use for your business, focus on growing your following.  It might be worth the time investment to get there.

Facebook Groups

It’s no secret. Facebook groups are one of my favorite organic marketing tools.  Although it depends on the group, members are usually focused on helping you grow your business.  It’s also a great place to network and meet new people for collaborations.

Check out the content sharing days for your favorite Facebook Groups.  Create a schedule in your planner or on an Excel spreadsheet.

Then, start posting.  Don’t forget to be a good Facebook group member and share other people’s work too.

The thing that makes a great Facebook group is involvement of its members.  The more involved of a group member you are, the more success everyone will have reaching new audiences.

Social Bookmarking Sites

A social bookmarking website is a place where users can share their posts, images, videos and other content.  The benefit of sharing your work on these sites is that you can reach a bigger audience.

When you share your blog post on a social bookmarking site, you increase your potential for new traffic.  Search engines will also rank the articles shared on bookmarking sites higher, so it might result in more search engine traffic.

It turns out that Pinterest is considered a social bookmarking site (although, I think of it as so much more).  There are a lot of other social bookmarking sites to check out.  Each with a different amount of traffic potential.  I like Mix (used to be Stumbleupon back in the day) and Delicious.  You can check out many other options here.

With so many bookmarking site options, you can get overwhelmed.  As with everything else, pick a few and focus on those.

Email Newsletter

When I started my online shop long ago, the general rule with email marketing was that you needed to create content from scratch.  So, in addition to making new designs and writing blog posts each week, I also created free printables and projects exclusively for my email newsletter.

And that was a LOT OF WORK.

Luckily, times have changed.  Newsletters are so past decade.  Social media sharing has introduced a new playing field where the emphasis is no longer on an original newsletter.

Instead, your business blog acts like your newsletter.  It gives potential customers ideas, freebies and shop updates.  But, they can be shared with everyone via your social media share buttons instead of just your mailing list subscribers.

But I thought you recommended starting a mailing list?

And I do.  You just don’t need to create an original weekly newsletter any more.

Instead, you can send your mailing list your blog posts.

Once upon a time, bloggers relied on RSS feeds to send traffic to their sites.  Although RSS feeds still exist, they aren’t terribly effective for engagement (sometimes as low as 2%).

On the contrary, email gets around 20% engagement and click throughs.  A lot better results for your sharing efforts.

Nowadays, you can use your mailing list as your psuedo “RSS feed”.  Set up your email marketing service to send your new blog post automatically. This will keep your biggest fans – usually the ones willing to hand over their email addresses – up to date about the content that you publish.

Publish on Medium

Duplicate content.  I know, I know.  But it’s not allowed?  And I’ve heard the same things.  It negatively affects your SEO.  

But the publishing platform Medium works around that.  Search engines need to prioritize where content is coming from.  By using the Medium import tools and WordPress plug in, they add a special link – called a canonical link – that protects the original content posted off site.   

This allows you to cross-post your content onto Medium, boosting the audience it gets in front of.

So, add some of your blog posts onto Medium.  But, don’t post all of them.  You want your potential audience from Medium to have a reason to visit your website.  Syndicating your content in this way will get your blog posts discovered by a whole new audience.

Contact Other Bloggers

If you’ve written a round-up blog post or included links that reference other bloggers’ work, you can encourage sharing and engagement of your blog post by directly contacting the bloggers.

When I’ve been included in a blog post, I’m more than happy to share out the post to my audience.  It gives my brand more credibility since my work is being featured.

It’s also a great way to make new friends (something that is occasionally overlooked in the world of online business).

Send a blogger an email or contact them through a Facebook group.  Although not all bloggers follow through, many enjoy having a steady stream of content to share with their audiences.

Top Forums in your Niche

As an expert in your niche, you have information that others want.  One opportunity for sharing your knowledge is participating in forums.  A forum is where people post questions and members answer them.

Identify the top forums in your niche.  If you aren’t sure where to start, look on Google or ask in a Facebook group.  

Once you find a forum to participate in, start answering questions and being helpful first.  Remember – give, give and give some more.  

As you start to get to know others in the forum, you can include a link to a blog post when it’s relevant.  Readers can click on your blog post to learn more if they’re interested.

Final Thoughts…

As much as we all want to believe in the “if you build it, they will come” mindset, sadly it no longer exists.  If you want to reach potential customers and grow your shop’s following with your blog, you will have to share your blog post (and often).

This process can get overwhelming when you are trying to get all of your other business responsibilities completed.  Choose two or three places that you’d like to consistently share your content.  Make a sharing schedule and post there on a regular basis.  

Over time, your following will grow organically.  More people will click through to your website and discover your shop.

Most importantly, stick with the sharing process.  Don’t give up blogging for your business too easily.  If one sharing method isn’t working, try another one.  Eventually, you’ll figure out where your audience hangs out and the best way of reaching them.