Do you ever wonder how to promote your blog posts once you hit publish, so that all your hard work writing them pays off – and instead of seeing crickets when you dig in to analytics, you see hundreds and thousands of page visits each day?

Today, I’m sharing a social media promotion plan  that will help you:

• Give new posts an initial spike of social traffic
• Turn your posts into other types of content
• Recycle older posts so they’re always out there

What this means is that right after you publish a post, you have a plan for how, when, and where you will share it.

One thing I should mention…you don’t have to tackle every social channel listed here.

If Facebook and Instagram are making a difference in your business (or if your audience hangs out here), get into a system for sharing your posts consistently on those channels first. You can always add the others later.

BONUS: I created this Blog Promotion Plan + Checklist to help put hte plan into action.

Blog Promotion Plan for Social Media Traffic

Facebook

• Day 1 – Share the link post
• Day 3 – Create a video summarizing post
• Day 7 – Turn a quick tip into an infographic
• Day 14 – Pose a question with a link to the post
• Day 31 – Repeat Day 1

Twitter

• Day 1 – Tweet a link to your post
• Day 1  – Change the text and share another tweet
• Day 3 – Share a clip of FB video
• Day 7 – Share a quote from your post
• Day 14 – Change the image and share another tweet
• Day 31 – Repeat Day 1 (use the best tweet)

Pinterest

• Day 1 – Pin to boards
• Day 3 – Share a second pin to boards
• Day 14 – Share a video pin from the short clip
• Day 31 – Repeat Day 1 (use the best pin)

Instagram

• Day 1 – post image with text overlay
• Day 3 – Instagram story in video format, introduce blog post content with call to action
• Day 7 – Post the video clip from Facebook
• Day 14 – Share the same quick tip from Facebook

LinkedIn

• Day 1 – Share the link post as an update
• Day 1 (four hours later) – share to LinkedIn Groups
• Day 7 – Share the same quick tip from Facebook
• Day 31 – Repeat Day 1

Youtube

• Day 1 – Upload your video, include a link back to your blog post
  Add YouTube cards to the video with pertinent links to your blog and website

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Whew! That’s a lot.

You’re probably thinking, I created a blog post, not a video or infographic. Where are these coming from? 

You need to create them to make this blog promotion strategy work effectively. Trust me though, they won’t take long to create, not after you’ve already written your post!

Right after you finish writing, create different types of visual content for it. This will keep your content fresh and interesting, and make scheduling apps happy because they tend to flag duplicate text.

Here’s what I create for each post:

• The post with a title image
• 2 pin images
• 2 Instagram images
• An Instagram story
• A video –  only for posts that make sense
• A question
• Quick tip infographic

Of course, you can work up to this. When I started sharing my posts regularly, I only created the blog image. Then I added a  pin image, then two, then multiple tweets, and so on.

So you don’t have to create all of this at once! Start where you are and work up to it. u

If you’re looking for other types of social media content you can share, click the image below to download my Social Media Cheat Sheet + Content Calendar.

What about scheduling tools?

There are so many scheduling tools to choose from. Here are a few that I like:

For Days 1-14

• Buffer
• Tailwind (Pinterest)
• Later (Instagram)

For Day 31 – and once a month after that

• SmarterQueue
• Tailwind SmartLoop
• Recurpost
• Edgar
• SocialOomph
• Later

A few random thoughts about the tools

Still wondering how to promote your blog effectively with the scheduling tools? Here are some pointers.

I love Buffer and use it a lot because of its integration with IFTTT for Buffer. But I wish it was easier to schedule content on specific days. With Buffer, you create a daily schedule and content gets added to the bottom of the queue. So for new posts that you want to share more frequently, there’s a lot of shuffling around to schedule them when you want.

For Pinterest, Tailwind is great. You can shuffle pins easily and schedule them any day you want (same for Later and Instagram). I even figured out a way to semi-loop pins using Tailwind.

Recurpost is free for up to 3 channels, so this is definitely worth looking into. Tailwind’s SmartLoop is a great way to recycle your posts so they’re always being shared. And SmarterQueue is my fave for automating Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. And then there’s this IFTTT/Google Calendar method that’s also free and works like a charm for Twitter and Facebook.

Related: 32 Ways to Boost Your Blog Traffic

Anything that’s made a huge difference in your traffic? Let me know and I’ll add it to the list!