As a plugin developer, sometimes it’s hard for me to step away from the code and focus on selling the products I’ve made. My head seems to always be thinking about the next thing I can create. So recently, I decided I needed to put a freeze on new development, and start focusing more on marketing. Content marketing to be specific.
One of the things I have been doing is creating blog posts for not only this site, but also for each of the product sites that I have (links at the bottom of the page). I know these posts aren’t the “Field of Dreams” – just because I write them doesn’t mean people will come read them. What I need is a way to promote my blog posts to an audience who won’t just stumble upon it from a Google search. I need to broadcast my posts out to my network, and hopefully get shared across other (more influential) networks as well.
My content marketing process
Share frequently enough that your posts are seen, but not so frequent that followers get annoyed Share on XI have five sites that I want to promote with content marketing. I decided that Monday through Friday will be my days to write new content for these sites. And each site gets its own day that I can dedicate to creating content. At a minimum, this will allow me to get one post out per site each week.
The topics I write about can vary, but for each site, I decided on a broad range of topics that generally relate to the market I’m targeting. I’m trying to provide useful content for the readers and not salsey self-promotional posts.
I also am not trying to get short-term traffic with this content. I’m trying to create evergreen content that will be just as relevant today as it will be a few years from now. I think most of the content can remain relevant for a long time.
Scheduling my evergreen blog posts
Next, I need to schedule these posts out so that my Twitter followers get notified of my new posts. I also share to Facebook, but I don’t have a ton of followers there, and it isn’t a high priority at the moment. For now, and for purposes of this article, Twitter is where I’m focused.
I recently started using an awesome plugin by Chris Klosowski called Post Promoter Pro to schedule out my content. It’s really super simple to use, and it lets you schedule out your posts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all from the same page where you write your blog post.
Sure, I could use a third party service to schedule my posts like Hootsuite or Buffer. But with Post Promoter Pro it’s so easy to create a few tweets and set a date/time for it to be shared.
I’ll save the details of how Post Promoter Pro works for another post. But seriously, go check it out.
How frequent should evergreen blog posts get shared?
This is the question I have been having trouble cracking. To be perfectly honest, I’ve been doing a lot of guesswork on how frequently my posts should be shared.
Each post is a little different, but generally, I have been scheduling out my posts according to these rules:
- Never share the same post more than once on the same day on the same social network.
- Share a post four times within a week of publishing the post.
- Usually, the first share will be on the day it was published.
- Unless it’s too late in the day. Then I’ll wait until the next day to share at a better time.
- Share the same post 2-3 times the following week.
- Share the same post once or twice the week after that.
- Schedule a few more out over a total of two months.
I really only recently started scheduling content out this way. It feels like there is something missing from my scheduling rules.
Since this is evergreen content, I still have some questions:
- Should I be scheduling it more frequently in the later weeks?
- Ideally, the content will be useful a year or more from now. Should I keep sharing my posts, perhaps with a reduced frequency over the next year?
- I need to strike a balance between sharing so frequently that followers get annoyed and so infrequent that not enough people see the posts. What’s the sweet spot?
- When should I stop sharing a post? Or, should I stop sharing it?
The answer “it depends” doesn’t cut it
All of the Google searches I’ve done on the topic came up with information that isn’t close to what I’m looking for. I’ve seen a lot of articles that say how many times you should post something to Twitter each day. What the best times of day are to post. What the best days of the week are to post. But none them mention how frequently you should share one specific post.
I realize the answers to all of my questions will probably start with “it depends on…”, but that’s a bunch of crap.
I’m looking for a general guideline that I can tweak over time to come up with a more predictable sharing schedule. Something like the set of rules I have above, that feels less random. Maybe even with a little bit of data backing it up.
I need answers
What have you done to maximize the engagement on your evergreen content? How frequent should evergreen blog posts get shared?
Let me know in the comments and on Twitter and I’ll keep this post updated regularly with the results.
Hey Scott, this caught my eye (yes on Twitter) and since I am a but crazy when it comes to social here is my own experience … although I will hold my tongue and not say “it depends” 🙂
Should I be scheduling it more frequently in the later weeks?
I say yes. I automatically schedule mine out for up to two months and then keep sharing it beyond that. The key here is that some posts, even if they appear to be evergreen, may still not be worth sharing 2 months down the road… so I have to give some extra thought to that.
Ideally, the content will be useful a year or more from now. Should I keep sharing my posts, perhaps with a reduced frequency over the next year?
Although I am trying to stay away from those dreaded words, it is dependent again on the content. In this case I look at my google analytics and see what is continuing to be visited, commented on and what ranks. Sometimes those may even be a bit out of date, but often they have enough substance to keep them going. There are less and less of these over time though.
I need to strike a balance between sharing so frequently that followers get annoyed and so infrequent that not enough people see the posts. What’s the sweet spot?
That’s the tough one and you will always find that you will lose some people for that very reason. But it’s a fact, especially on twitter, that stuff goes by quickly and people don’t spend their entire day there, at least most don’t. 🙂 Example, I share about every hour. When I do a post, that day I share it 1 time on FB, LinkedIn and Google+. But on twitter I share it 9 times. The key is I share enough other content between those so it’s not all in a row. Again, some may be turned off by what they might consider too many shares, but to be honest, that’s not my audience.
When should I stop sharing a post? Or, should I stop sharing it?
This hopefully is answered previously. But for me, even if I consider it evergreen, it becomes outdated in one way or another. It’s kind of odd what I do, but I think okay, if I share a post and I personally would look at it and think, damn, this is 4 years old, not interested, then I stop. It may still get organic search traffic and that’s okay. No real definitive guidelines here.
Sorry for the long comment but I can go on and on about this topic. Do what works for you, test a lot and watch your stats.. you will find your groove.
Hi Bob,
No apologies! Thanks for the awesome insights!
I know I was a bit harsh with the “it depends” criteria, but I was hoping to encourage a little thought into any replies – exactly like what you provided.
9x on Twitter is more than what I would have expected, but like you said stuff goes by quickly.
Since writing this post, I came across some other insights that I’ve been incorporating into my social media posting, which has changed up my routine a little. I’m hoping to aggregate all the info I’m collecting to come up with a less random posting strategy.
I’m hoping it’ll make for a good “evergreen” blog post 🙂
Glad they were helpful and sounds like you have been doing the right thing. Looking at different approaches and changing up your routine.
And ha! No worries, about the “it depends”. It actually made me think how many times I have said that, and although it is often true, it certainly doesn’t help. Also, helps me to think through my reply more 🙂
Cheers and will look forward to reading that next post!