Blogging 101: Part 4

3 To-Dos Before Publishing

By Erica Rascón on May 2, 2018 in Marketing

Once you add great media to your blog post, you’re almost ready to hit publish! There are three tidbits that will help readers find your blog post and bring greater return on your investment.

Add Categories and Tags

Categories and tags are primarily used to organize your content and make it easier for readers to find what they’re looking for. These keywords are also used to help search engines identify what your content is about. This makes it easier for your blog post to appear appropriately in search queries.

Let’s continue with the nursery safety blog example from our previous posts. In that instance, category may be “apartment safety” and tags may include “childproofing your apartment,” “baby proofing your apartment” or “nursery.”

SEO Plugin 

If you are working on a blogging platform that permits plugins like WordPress, an SEO plugin may be a worthwhile investment. It goes beyond the functionalities of Categories and Tags to help search engines “crawl” through your content. (That’s a nerd term for quickly scanning the content to identify its purpose and help it appear appropriately during internet searches.)

The SEO plugin may ask you to identify keywords. Long-tail keywords are best here. “How to create a safe nursery” will be more beneficial than just “nursery,” for example.

The plugin may also request a description. This is a brief summary of your blog post that may appear as an excerpt under your link and blog post title in a query listing. Keep the description to 2-3 sentences.

Social Media Plugin

Depending on the flexibility of your platform, you may also be able to add a social media plugin. The best of these plugins allow you to create custom posts for social media. You can add hashtags and use the format most suitable for each platform.

Other social media plugins will restrict you to sharing the same content across all social media platforms. Without using the native language of each platform, though, your posts seem formulaic and are less likely to engage users.

Many social media plugins that are built into your blog will come with limitations. Few will let you schedule the time that you publish to the social media platforms. Our next blog post discusses why that matters and which social media scheduling tools offer greater flexibility.

Now you’re ready to hit publish! Your blog post will appear on your blog for prospects and residents.