Well done, you’ ve written your blog post and hit publish, this is where the real work begins. What! You thought the hard work was in writing the blog post. You would be right to some extent. But now you have to act in order to promote that post. If you are wondering what to do next, you will find 11 key actions to check off once you have published your blog post.
*This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Please read full disclosure for more information*
Before writing your blog post, I suggest that you go through what to do before you hit publish checklist.
Let’ s get started.
What You Should Do After You Hit Publish
Read the Content on a Different Device.
Send it to Your Email List.
Link it to Old Posts.
Submit Your Post to the Search Engines.
Pin the Post to Pinterest.
Add Content to Social Media.
Add Fresh Pins.
Reply to Comments.
Read and Comment on Other Blogs in Your Niche.
Update Your Blog Posts.
Check Your Analytics.
1 Read the Content on a Different Device,
The first thing you should do once you have published your blog post is to proofread it once again.
Try to do this on a different device.
I suggest a mobile device as this is the main way that people will be searching for your content.
This is also the way that Google will be ranking sites.
This will allow you to see how the post looks in a popular format so you can make any tweaks that are needed.
Re-read the blog post checking again for spellings and grammatical errors.
You’ d be surprised how these get missed. Each error lessens your online credibility.
No matter how many times, I check for errors, I can be sure to find another grammatical error.
They can be hard to spot when you have written and read the post several times.
If you are able, ask someone else to proofread for you, this is because they are more likely to spot these small errors.
The next thing to do is to check that all the links in your post are working correctly.
The best way to do this is to click through each link and make sure it is directing to where you intend the reader to go.
You will also be checking for broken links or errors.
You do not want broken links to happen. It is a sure-fire way to hurt your SEO.
No one wants to click a link and find it no longer exists.
A handy tip here, you could add a plugin to your site to help you keep a track of any broken links.
I use a Broken Link Checker plugin to do this.
How to add a plugin on wordpress
In your wordpress dashboard, go to plugins. Click Add new. In the search box, type in the plugin you are searching for ie “Broken Link Checker ”. You will see a list of plugins available.
Find one that is compatible with your version of wordpress and has been recently updated by the developer. Click install. You will then need to click activate. You will see the newly installed plugin in your plugins or in your tools. You can go to the plugin settings to adjust it to your needs.
Whenever a link breaks on your site, broken link checker will show an error message.
This is how it would look in your wordpress dashboard.
You can see the red error message in the bottom left-hand corner, showing that one link in a blog post is broken.
I can easily go and check that link and fix it.
Next you want to check that all your offers, such as downloads, freebies, are working correctly.
Can your readers download that handy checklist you have offered?
2 Send it to Your Email List
If you have an email list, and I suggest that you do if you have not started yet.
Send the blog post out to your email list.
This means that they will go and have a look.
This will create page views and Google may start to pay some attention to your blog post.
3 Link it to Old Posts.
Make sure that your post is linked to other internal posts. This is known as internal linking.
You do not want to have any blog posts that are orphan posts. (Sounds sad right.).
An orphan post is a post that is all on its own.
You don’ t want that to happen to your posts.
Every piece of content that you write should have a purpose and should be able to link to other posts.
You should be able to create internal links between all of your posts.
When you are starting out, you won’ t have many posts at first.
As your content starts to grow, you should start to link each post you write with an old post.
On a regular basis you should go back over older posts and link those old posts with the newer posts.
Okay, so it will get more complicated as you write more blog posts, what with trying to keep a track of which post has internal links or not.
There is a tool called Link Whisper which helps you to do this.
There is a cost to this tool, so maybe a tool to think about for later as your blog begins to grow.
4 Submit Your Post to the Search Engines
If you have already submitted a sitemap to the search engine, then Google should automatically pick up your post.
But if you want to check if this has been picked up sooner then you can submit your post to google console as soon as it is published.
You can check to see what posts Google has picked already.
To do this type into google search — “site:yourdomainname.com ”.
You should see a list of all the pages/posts that Google has indexed for your site.
If any of your blog posts or pages are missing then submit them to Google search console.
You can do this by going to Google Search Console
If you want to know how to easily SEO your blog.
This step by step FREE SEO training which will walk you through how to optimise your blog.
5 Pin the Post to Pinterest
If your niche will do well in Pinterest, and some will do better there than others, then you will want to add your content there.
Not sure how to get started on Pinterest, you will find a handy guide here.
To pin your post to Pinterest, you would need to create some pins for your blog post.
Start by pinning it to your most relevant board.
Ideally, you want to keep publishing fresh pins for you content.
But this does take a lot of time to build up in Pinterest.
If you are looking for a Pinterest strategy then this is the course that helped me to learn everything Pinterest.
6 Add a Fresh Pin or Two Daily
If you are wondering how to keep publishing fresh pins each day, without having to be hands one, then Tailwind is one way that will help you to do this.
Tailwind is a scheduling tool that helps you to add pins to be published into the future.
There is a bit of a divide about the use of Tailwind and whether it is worth it.
I have been using it for the past 6 months and so far have found that it helps me to schedule out my pins in advance.
You can schedule your pins in Pinterest itself, so you don’ t really need Tailwind. But the native Pinterest scheduler will only allow you to schedule out for two weeks at a time.
With Tailwind you can schedule out a year in advance. I don’ t go that far, and I have my pins scheduled at least 3 months in advance.
Let’ s face it, pinning and Pinterest will take a lot of time, so make sure that it is a traffic strategy that is right for your audience.
7 Add Blog Content to Social Media
You can add your blog post to other social media you own, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
This will keep your social media updated by posting your new blog content onto your feed.
It can get tricky trying to keep up with all social media, especially if you are a mumpreneur trying to do everything on your own.
In that case, I suggest that you stick to one social media method and build up your presence there first.
Once you gain some traction or following, then you can add in a second one and so forth.
Trying to do all at once will only get overwhelming and cause you to give up before you get started.
8 Reply to Comments
You should reply to any comments that you receive on your blog post.
This shows your readers that you are engaged with them and listening to them.
They will want to come back and read more.
You will also be able to gauge how they feel about your content and if they found it helpful.
If there is anything they are saying is missing in your post, then maybe this can be added or maybe even calls for a new blog post to be written to cover that topic.
9 Read and Comment on Other Blogs in Your Niche
Another thing you can do is go and read blogs in your niche. Then comment on them.
Some blogs will allow you to drop your own blog link with a comment.
Make sure that you are not pushy and be respectful.
If you say something insightful or interesting, then people will start to take notice of you.
Maybe they will go and have a look your blog.
10 Update your Blog Posts
Once your blog post is out there, you should have a regular schedule to update your blog posts.
This could be on a monthly, quarterly, 6 monthly or annual basis.
No one wants to read a blog post about how to do something in 2020 when it’ s 2021 right!!
You will need to go back and see if the content is still relevant and update it.
When you update a post, you can write a short note at the top of the post to show that you have recently updated this content. Just like this one here.
This is because you can’ t change the published date, but you want a way to show readers that this content is still fresh and relevant.
11 Check Your Analytics
You will want to keep a track of how the blog post is doing.
You should have Google analytics connected to your blog in order to do this.
Not sure how to do this?
This short SEO training will show you the key actions you need to ensure you have good on page and off page SEO for your blog.
Analytics, doesn’ t sound interesting I know, but it is so important.
I neglected this for too long.
Until I found the Gsite Plugin, which I think works well to help when connecting your analytics.
Analytics will allow you to see which posts are getting clicks and which aren’ t.
You can then make decisions about particular posts.
Maybe you need to add more content to the post, if it was too short or vague.
If it simply is not doing the job, maybe you have to just delete that post.
In Summary: Blog Post Checklist – What To Do After You Hit Publish (11 Key Actions)
If you’ ve scrolled to the bottom, what we talked about is that once you have written your blog post and followed the before actions checklist, then you will also need to take some key actions after you have published your blog post.
This is to ensure that your content remains fresh and continues to get eyeballs to it.
Without eyeballs you have no traffic.
No traffic means no revenue.
No revenue means you have a hobby rather than an online business.
Here are the 11 actions to take once you have hit publish on your blog post.
Read the Content on a Different Device.
Send it to Your Email List.
Link it to Old Posts.
Submit Your Post to the Search Engines.
Pin the Post to Pinterest.
Add a Fresh Pin or Two Daily.
Add Content to Social Media.
Reply to Comments.
Read and Comment on Other Blogs in Your Niche.
Update Your Blog Posts.
Check Your Analytics.
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*This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Please read full disclosure for more information*
Featured image: 123RF
