Sharing Your Blog Posts in Emails and on LinkedIn

When you’re trying to build community it’s important to share your content and get as much visibility as possible. The more people who see your posts, the more people who will know what you do and how you can help them. In the first post of this series on the importance building community in blogging, I shared seven steps you could take to build community on your blog. Today we are going to discuss the fifth and sixth step, as step five is REALLY EASY and will not take many words, even for me!

• Share the link to your latest post in your email signature and on your LinkedIn page.
• Share a condensed version of your blog as a LinkedIn article and then link to your blog for those who want additional information.

Linking to Your Post in Your Email and on LinkedIn

Email Signature

If you send a lot of email each day, an easy and free way to market your blog is to include a link in the signature section of your email. If folks want to click, they can. If they don’t, they don’t have to. If you work for a small business, this should be mandatory for all who work within your company. Send out the link each time you post and let employees know to include it in their signatures.

Don’t just include the URL, actually include text. “Are you struggling to grow your blog? Try this tip for engaging with other bloggers to start increasing your audience this week.” By including text, you show you value the reader’s time so he or she can choose if it’s a topic they are interested in.

LinkedIn Page

LinkedIn is a great place for professionals to meet. When I first started my business back in 2011, I was SO GREEN. LinkedIn is where I met my first 12 clients. I was involved in groups, commented frequently on posts that would show up in my feed, and would stay engaged. At the time, I was coaching people through starting their businesses, writing books, and changing their career direction by obtaining careers in their sweet spots. I was able to test out services and workshops on people who were willing to invest in my by trying them out and providing great feedback in return for taking them. When I finally started taking paying clients in 2012, I knew which services to offer based upon what I did really well and which ones I wanted to take more time to invest in some education so I could become better.

Since LinkedIn has other professionals, it is great for businesses who offer business services and products. Since it has humans, it’s great for coaches, writers, and others who have services or products that people be looking for. Some professions are more heavily represented than others, so look around and see what is there and make your decision about how effective it will be for you. If you find it will be effective, share a short post on LinkedIn each time you post and include a link within your profile. There is a “Media” option right in your Summary section (the top section of your LinkedIn profile)

Publish a Condensed Blog Post on LinkedIn

LinkedIn allows you to publish articles. This can be a great tool if you want to connect with professionals. Sharing condensed versions of your blog posts (or expanded versions if your blogs are short) and then linking to your posts will allow you to repurpose your blog content. This allows you to maximize your resources while reaching wider audiences. Because the material is already written, you are simply tweaking it for the new audience.

How would you do this? Great question! If I were to share this series on LinkedIn, I wouldn’t want to post eight separate blogs. Instead, I would share one post and then instead of listing the steps in a bulleted list as I did, I would include them as section headings with short summaries underneath that then linked to each of these individuals posts with more information. This would give them new content they haven’t seen but would save me time from having to write a new article because I already have the content written. Instead of hours of work, it would be a few minutes of pulling together what I already have.