The Benefits Of Blog Syndication To Gain Maximum Exposure For Your Content
An article that looks at blog syndication from professional blogger Pete Harris where he looks at the benefits of syndicating blog content.
Blog syndication is maybe something that you have never heard of let alone realise the importance of it, but it is a crucial part of your content marketing strategy. This is unfortunately where many bloggers become unstuck because they are not aware of the significance of syndicating their content all over the world wide web and the benefits it has to their business.
They think that once they have created their content it will be up to Google along with the other major search engines who will drive tons of traffic to their blog and blog posts. In reality that is entirely possible as long as they have optimized their content for the search engines bots and spiders to crawl over and analyse the content for relevancy and rank it highly in their search results.
Search engine optimization is just one of the marketing strategies that any content marketer must get right and if you are not sure how to optimize your content then I encourage you to read a post that I have recently created titled Blogging And SEO which you can read by clicking here. The benefits of a correctly optimized blog post are huge because you will be able to attract free traffic to your website when people enter a keyword into the search box that you are targeting, therefore you will have a greater chance to capture leads or generate sales for your products and services that you offer.
Blog Syndication Saves You Valuable Time
As a content marketer your biggest investment into your business is the time that it takes you to create your content which on average would be around an hour or two so why stop there when by just spending a little bit more time spreading your message to gain the maximum exposure.
I think the best way to get my point over to you is to use the analogy of your content and a high street shop and before you start thinking that I have gone of my rocker just humour me for a moment.
For anyone who is thinking about opening a high street business whether that is a shop, office, or service provider it is all about location, location, location. The last thing they would want to do is to be down the bottom of a dark alley way where no one walks by therefore not knowing that they are there. They may have the best product or service in the world, but they have little hope of generating any kind of business.
What they would want to do is have the most prominent location right on the main high street where all the foot traffic is who browse the shop window and then get enticed in through the door to sample the fayre that is on offer.
So, Pete, what has this got to do with my blog I hear you say. Well that is a great question so let me explain. Your blog is your shop front, your virtual real estate where you can showcase everything that you and your business has to offer, and the internet is the high street but on a much higher level.
Your Blog Content Reaches A Global Audience
The world wide web as the title suggests is a global entity and you have the opportunity to leverage it and potentially reach billions of people in the process as opposed to a high street location where you must rely on the local community to support your business.
The thing is though is that if you solely rely on the search engines, albeit as powerful as they are, then you run the risk of severely limiting the impact that your business can provide as you will only attract the people who visit the search engines to find solutions to their problems. Now you will still get lots of free traffic from the search engines but at the same time you will be leaving money on the table.
This is where blog syndication comes into play because you have the opportunity to chase down multiple rabbit holes to share your message and reach millions of individuals. The internet connects people so why not cast your net to catch as many individuals as you can.
Blog Syndication – Where Are These Individuals Hanging Out
The easiest way for you to determine where your prospective leads and customers are is to look at your own habits when it comes to searching for and consuming the information. The first port of call will probably be social media and the news and update feeds you have set up for yourself. Maybe you are like most of the worlds’ population and check in multiple times per day and each time there is fresh content that appears in your feeds from your favourite sources.
This doesn’t just happen by magic because there are systems that run in the background which makes this all happen, and I will talk about this in a moment.
Another favourite place is public forums and again you may be a member of multiple forums depending on your interests and hobbies. These places are great resources to find information from the general public and experts in their field who share their knowledge and experience.
Question & Answer Websites
The same can be said for answer websites and message boards where people can ask questions seeking for solutions and there are many other channels where content can be shared which is something that I go into greater detail within a comprehensive blogging course that I have created, more on that later.
So, what are the benefits of using these channels to syndicate your content? Well the obvious one is that you don’t have all your eggs in one basket as you would if you just relied on the search engines for your web traffic. Yes, there are billions of searches made each day, but you will be competing with lots of other people in your niche within these platforms, so your slice of the pie will be limited.
When you go that extra mile and set up these other channels then you have much wider opportunities to attract the people to your blog who are specifically interested in what you have to say.
At the end of the day you can potentially 100x times the exposure of your content through blog syndication so why wouldn’t you do it? Maybe what stops people doing it is because they just don’t know how to so let me go into this now.
Blog Syndication – How To Blast Your Content All Over The Internet
When I say blast, I don’t mean spam because there is a saying “less is more” so what do I mean by this. When it comes to syndicating your content then you must have a plan in pace where you are going to send it.
Look at your business model and create your potential lead and customer avatar. When you have this then you can determine where they hang out as mentioned in the previous section. Once you have this determined then you can set up your profiles and business pages so when people land on them, they know exactly what to expect from you and the content that you are going to create.
The benefit of doing this is that you are not wasting your time sending your content to the wrong places and to people who are not interested hence why I say, “less is more”.
This Is Where The Magic Happens
Now this is where the “magic” happens. There are many automated software applications that can connect to the channels and profiles that you have set up. Within these applications there will be a little bit of work for you to do but you will only have to do it once, so it is well worth the few hours.
What happens then is when you create a blog post and publish it to the internet the systems take over and pings your content out so that your followers can read it in their newsfeeds and if they like it they will share it with their friends. Automation and social sharing are a winning formula.
How does this benefit you? Well the answer is simple. It frees up your time to create high quality content and not have to manually syndicate it yourself, in other words you will be working smarter and not harder. The technology is there as I use it myself so why not leverage it to makes things easier, it’s a no brainer.
How To Start A Blog Online Course
Earlier I mentioned that I have created a comprehensive blogging course and one of the modules I concentrate on is blog syndication. Within it I cover many areas of blog syndication including what I have mentioned but also a whole lot more. Hopefully you can see the great benefits of syndicating your content and if you want to discover more then check out my course here.
As a content marketer blog syndication is one of the main weapons in your arsenal that you need to leverage to increase the impact that you content can have. The time you take to create your content is your most valuable commodity so make sure you maximize it by systematically spreading your message to the people who want to receive it.
As always, I wish you every success.
Pete Harris
Professional Blogger & Information Publisher