If your business has a blog, you’re most likely not going to be creating content with an expectation that it will directly lead to sales. Instead, company blogs show visitors and potential customers you know your stuff and are a leader in your industry. Personal blogs can also be great revenue generators, but that’s not their main goal. Whichever one you’re managing, you want people to actually read your content.
You need to actively market your blog in order to get those views on your articles. Marketing automation helps streamline the marketing process so you can spend your time actually writing while still raking in the views.
What Is Marketing Automation?
Getting your articles noticed in the sea of content out there is harder than ever these days. And it takes a lot of time and effort to do right. Marketing automation allows you to set up tasks to be done automatically instead of manually completing them one by one.
Marketing automation platforms also provide helpful data insights on your articles, allow you to communicate better with your audience and subscriber list, and can get your social media efforts to boost your blog posts.
Social Media Promotion
Having a solid social media presence is essential for almost every business—and it’s a great way to get the word out about your blog and promote new content. With marketing automation, you can schedule out social media posts to go live at the same time as your blog posts to help with promotion.
Scheduling out social posts can also help you get more visibility if you have followers and subscribers across the world. If you see that a large number of blog readers are in a specific geographic region, scheduling posts for when they’re most likely to be online and active will improve your reach without having to manually post at all hours of the day.
Subscriber Communication
Building up a subscriber base is a great way to get leads and share future articles with people who you know are already interested in your content. Whether you’re managing your businesses blog or cultivating your own personal subscriber list, you want to make sure you’re engaging with your audience and nurturing that relationship.
Automating communications between you and your subscribers will keep them interested in your content, increase brand recognition, and keep them from hitting that unsubscribe button. Some tasks you should automate include:
- Immediately sending a confirmation email for new subscribers
- Thank you emails after someone subscribes to your blog or receives a downloadable
- Sending mass emails to your subscriber lists for new blog posts
Content Optimization
Many automation platforms have robust analytics that can give you more information about how individual articles are performing. Looking at the numbers can give you a better idea of what topics your readers are interested in, how long they spend reading your blog, and when the best time to post an article is. It can also be a great way to see what types of article headlines perform best.
If you’re marketing your content in different places like emails, social media, or paid ads, marketing automation platforms can help you see where people are finding your articles and if there is one area that’s driving more traffic than others. This can help you focus future marketing efforts in areas that have proven to bring traffic.
With all of that data in hand, you can optimize your blog posts so you’re giving your readers the exact type of content they’re looking for, in the right format, and at the right time.
Once you’ve automated these three essential marketing tasks, you’ll have much more freedom in your schedule for other things—like starting on that next blog post.
As a marketing enthusiast and avid blogger, Miles explores the latest marketing trends and practices. His mission is to help everyday business owners navigate the complicated, sometimes scary, but mostly exhilarating world of marketing and advertising.