When you start to blog your focus is understandably on the post you are writing. However if you don’t then think about about how you will share this post to an audience that will appreciate it and potentially share with others, then you run the risk of ‘talking’ to the ether…

Connect your blog to your social media accounts

You can save valuable time by automating a tweet or post to LinkedIn which shares the title of your blog post and a link. Within WordPress you need to click on My Sites (top left) and then scroll down to Sharing. Here click on Connections and choose which of your social sites you wish to connect your blog to. Once connected, each time you publish a post, this will automatically be shared in these spaces.

Add social media sharing buttons

As above go to Sharing and then Sharing Buttons. You can then select the social media sites readers of your blog can click to share a post to. This makes it easy for readers to share your post with their own communities. It will automatically take the title of your post and the link. This can then be edited by the individual if they choose to add a further comment.

Add a subscribe by email box

Readers can choose to subscribe to your blog and receive email notifications when a new post has been published. You can do this by adding a ‘Follow Blog Widget‘ to the side bar.

Promote your blog

Add a link to your blog in your social media bios. That way if someone visits your Twitter account for example they can find the link easily.  Other examples include adding a link to your email signature along with the name of the blog and adding the blog URL to your business cards.

Re-post in Medium

Medium is an online publishing platform developed by Evan Williams (co-founder of Twitter). First of all you will need to create an account. Once this is done you can then choose to import your blog post by simply posting the URL. It’s quick and easy to do and your post is then shared to a wider audience.

Import a post to Medium

To import a post published elsewhere onto Medium:

1. Click your user icon > Stories > Import or go to https://medium.com/p/import.
2. Paste the URL of the story you’d like to import into the field.
3. Click Import.
4. Click See your story to edit.
5. Publish your post.

Imported stories will automatically apply a canonical URL referencing the original source material.

Finally

Don’t forget to acknowledge shares of your blog post. A simple “thanks for sharing!” goes along way.