The Bare Minimum You Should Do With Every Blog Post You Publish | Ep. #563

In episode #563, Eric and Neil lay out what they do with their blog posts and how it helps them succeed. Tune in to hear some great blogging tips! 

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

  • [00:27] Today’s Topic: The Bare Minimum You Should Do With Every Blog Post You Publish
  • [00:38] Neil thinks he’s published 6,000-7,000 blog posts.
  • [00:57] Neil always has a simple checklist for writing blog posts.
  • [01:12] When using BuzzSumo, you need to look at what has worked in the last year.
  • [01:33] Go after social traffic and search traffic (SEMrush).
  • [01:52] Come up with better headlines, outline the post, then complete it.
  • [02:11] Go above and beyond and be super thorough.
  • [02:21] Add custom images from stock photos or graphs.
  • [02:31] Email everyone you link out to in your post.
  • [03:00] Reach out to everyone who shared similar articles and direct them to your article.
  • [03:38] Take the article and put it into Ahrefs and see who links to it.
  • [04:05] Eric’s strategy: automate the process of sharing to your social channels using Zapier.
  • [04:39] Blogging Checklist is a great plug-in for WordPress.
  • [04:55] Have a word count, image count, source count, etc. and put it on the checklist.
  • [05:24] Think about how to upgrade or repurpose your content.
  • [05:43] That’s it for today!
  • [05:45] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway!

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The post The Bare Minimum You Should Do With Every Blog Post You Publish | Ep. #563 appeared first on Marketing School Podcast.

Full Transcript of The Episode

Automated: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Siu.

Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.

Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.

Eric Siu: And today we are going to talk about the bare minimum that you should do with every blog post that you publish. So, Neil, how many blog posts do you think you've published in the last, I don't know, 16 years?

Neil Patel: I don't know. Maybe like 6000, 7000. You have to keep in mind, a lot of my blog posts are translated into different languages, so the number is high.

Eric Siu: Got it. So, what kind of checklist or checks do you give to your writers when they're publishing?

Neil Patel: My checklist is really simple, in which we first find a topic that's hot. So, you find a topic by going to BuzzSumo and you see what's hot on the social web. You type in keywords related to your space. You'll see what's working from a social perspective and what's not.
When you're using BuzzSumo to come up with topics, you can't just look at what's worked in the last year. You also have to look at what's worked in the last three months, six months. The more recent it is, the better off the data on if you write something similar for the work.
We do the same thing with SEMrush. You do that as well with SEMrush. You put in the URL and it ends up telling you all the articles that worked really well for your competitors. Once we got that out of the way and we now have a final list of topics that we should go after based on social traffic, BuzzSumo and search traffic, SEMrush or Ahrefs, whatever one you want to use there, then we end up looking at the titles of these topics.
We brainstorm 10 or 20 of them. If you don't know how to write good headlines, go to Copyblogger and look for their headline formulas. You can use them to come up with better headlines. Then we outline the posts. We outline it with a title, introduction. Or technically you already have the title, introduction. Then we bullet out the body, we write the conclusion, and then we fill it in.
Our posts needs to encompass the other posts, plus be like 10 times better. So, we go really above and beyond super thorough and we're like, "Our content is just the shit." Right? Or at least we need to believe that. Once you do that, you start adding in your custom images. So, can do stock photos or ideally draw them up or create custom graphs. That all is useful.
And then last, but not least, our promotion strategy is twofold. One, we email everyone who we linked out to in our post and we say, "Hey, so and so," even if they're our competitor, "Hey, so and so." Like, "Hey, Eric, love SingleGrain. You guys do an awesome job. Just want to let you know I linked out to you my latest blog post. Feel free and check it out. If you like it, feel free and share it on your Twitter or Facebook or whatever you want."
Then the second approach that we do is we go and see everyone who links to ... Actually, there's three approaches, not two. So, that was the first approach. The second approach is if it's the social media type of article and we found it from BuzzSumo, we click on View Shares because in BuzzSumo it shows you every single person who shared it.
And we reach out to them like, "Hey, Brian, I noticed you shared X, Y and Z article by author A, B and C. We have a similar one coming out, but ours covers 101 ways instead of 10 ways. Do you want to check it out? Cheers, Neil." And a lot of times, they'll respond back with "yes" because they already shared a similar article. And you say, "Here you go. Feel free and share it if you like it. P.S. If there's anything I can do for you, let me know. Cheers, Neil." By doing that, you'll get a ton more social shares, especially if you combine it with the first strategy.
And then the last promotion strategy that we end up doing is we take the article, put it into Ahrefs, see who links to it. We outreach to all the people linked to the original and be like, "Hey, so and so, we noticed you linked to this article from author A, B and C. We actually have a similar article, but ours covers 90 more ways that theirs doesn't. Let me know if you want to check it out and add it to your site. Here's the link just in case. Cheers, Neil. P.S. Let me know if there's anything I can do for you."
That's our checklist and strategy. What's yours?

Eric Siu: Yeah, I'll keep ours very brief because it's very similar to what Neil is talking about, but a couple of things you can add. So, when you are trying to share to your social channels, you can automate the entire process. You can use a tool like If This Then That or you can use Zapier. I personally prefer Zapier.
So, let's say you have a post that comes out on your WordPress blog, well, you could push it out to your Twitter, to your Facebook at the same time, to all these different things. Just making sure that you are pushing out to, I guess, whatever channels that you are part of. So, I think that's one thing that goes without saying.
And the other thing is we use a plugin on WordPress called blogging checklist. So, what blogging checklist does is at the bottom of the post when the writer is writing, it gives them a checklist, literally. They can check off these boxes.
So, for us, it's like is the blog post 1500 or 2000 words above? Kudos for 3000 words. Does it have a image tied to it? Is every single source or every single kind of mention, does it link to a case study or linked outside. So, you have to be very anal about this kind of stuff because you're trying to adhere to a certain quality.
If you look at NeilPatel.com or if you look at QuickSprout.com or any other websites, it's always the same consistent quality because Neil is very anal about quality.
So, the final thing I'll add too, kind of the bare minimum portion, is thinking about how you can go about repurposing or upgrading your content, Google Aleyda Solis' Content Reusage Workflow and then try to eventually build that workflow in where it's just part of the process, and that becomes part of your bare minimum, because then you're going to be able to maximize your traffic.

Neil Patel: And that's it from our end. If you want our latest marketing giveaway, make sure you go out to SingleGrain.com/giveaway.

Eric Siu: Check it out. You'll be happy.

Automated: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review, so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on Marketing School.

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