In this post, I want to talk about how I got the most shared post of the week for “blog promotion”, according to Buzzsumo’s trend detection tool.
On Thursday March 6, I launched an expert roundup post featuring over 40 known SEO, social media and blogging experts to share a tip to help blogger and content marketers promote their content.
Larry Kim discovered the post right away when I published it and tweeted it out:
Mark Traphagen posted it to Google Plus and tagged everyone else in it, who then shared it out through their social media channels:
Within 3 days, the post received over 1,000 social shares making it the top shared post of the week for “blog promotion”, according to Buzzsumo.
Although expert roundups may seem like an easy way to get traffic to a blog post, creating a good one actually requires a lot of organization, preparation and work. In fact, this was probably one of the most time consuming and challenging posts that I’ve done yet, taking over a week to complete.
In this article, I’m going to cover the following topics:
- How I was able to get over 40 experts to participate in this roundup on a fairly new blog
- Things I did to make the post a success
- Lessons learned and things I would do differently
- What if you are an influencer that is tired of getting expert roundup emails? A few ideas for opting out
Expert Roundup Posts – The Benefits
Expert roundup posts are becoming popular for a few reasons. First of all, they are a WIN-WIN-WIN for all involved if executed properly:
-The influencers – The influential blogger gets more exposure from being featured. When the other featured bloggers share the post with their followers, the post gets a lot of traffic and the influencer gets exposure to a potentially new audience.
The link to the influencer’s site is also helpful for SEO purposes.
-The readers – Readers like expert roundups because it is a collection of tips and ideas from people who are successful and known experts in their field. If the contributions are also good, then the perceived value of the article is high and readers will share the post even more.
-The organizer – Of course, the blogger that organizes the roundup post will benefit as well from the traffic and exposure.
Preparation
Make sure your site has high quality content, good design, and also that you have developed some promotion skills. Your site should be somewhere that an expert would want to get featured on.
1) Design can make a difference
First of all, the site design should be good, which means not using popular free templates. However, the design does not have to be expensive and a premium Wordpress theme can work.
On the other hand, poor site design or layout can lead to a bad first impression.
2) Create quality content and promote it
Before I did the roundup, I worked on creating quality content on my own site and also promoting it. The post I did before the roundup was a compilation of keyword research tools with over 60 keyword tools and ideas. It had over 200 social shares at the time and several comments, which is reasonable.
By creating and promoting your own quality content, it shows influencers that you are able to contribute to the promotion of the post and that they may even receive long term exposure and even traffic from the roundup that you are preparing to do.
3) Get a little experience first
A lot of new bloggers might think that doing an expert roundup right away is a good way to get traffic. However, influential bloggers get lots of emails, including other expert roundup requests.
Someone recently came up with the term “content shock” to describe the day that content marketing will become ineffective as people get tired of the excess of content that is being created. I’d like to introduce the idea of “expert roundup shock”, when influencers will get tired of receiving expert roundup emails and readers might even get tired of reading them.
One blogger I emailed said that she was getting 20 roundup requests a week. As expert roundups become more popular, I predict that experts will become more selective and pick only their best opportunities. In fact, some experts are already being selective about which roundups they participate in.
4) Follow key influencers before you need to and start building relationships
One other thing I did well before planning the roundup was start forming relationships with a few influencers. I also started following key influencers well before I decided to do the roundup. Although it is not required, becoming familiar with influencers, who they are and what they write about make it easier to start a conversation with them.
Picking a Good Question
One of the most critical parts of doing a successful round up is picking a good question that appeals to a wide audience. Although influencers can give a post an initial push, the bulk of the social sharing and re-sharing is done by other people. A good topic is critical to maximize the spread of the content through the Internet.
1) Make it something the influencer doesn’t have to think too hard about
Influencers are very busy, so don’t make them think too hard. They won’t want to go back and forth with you for clarification so take some time to come up with clear wording.
If the question is too difficult, they may even decide not to participate. Ideally, try to pick something they can answer quickly and easily.
2) Make it something that resonates with your target audience and solves a problem
Another important factor is to make the question something that will align with the interest of your own readership. Solving a common problem is a good choice for a topic.
I spend a decent amount of time in forums and communities, so observing the types of questions that people are asking is a great place to start. I was in a LinkedIn community for bloggers earlier this year and a blogger asked how to get traffic to her blog.
She was frustrated that she was blogging and no one was reading her posts. However, the thing that made me realize how big a problem this was for people was all the responses and “suggestions” from other people who also had low traffic blogs.
Although people wanted to help and meant well, it became apparent that most people didn’t know much about how to promote blogs. There were a lot of responses to the post and I kept getting notifications for up to a month later with people adding new responses.
Keyword research was another logical step to take and a quick keyword search in Google Keyword Planner confirmed that people were indeed still searching for ideas for phrases like “how to promote my blog”.
3) Try to make it original
Eventually, as expert roundups increase in popularity, experts will get tired of answering the same questions, so try to make your question original. A few roundups that worked well cited recent news in online marketing and asked for expert opinions. A good example is this roundup that came out in response to Matt Cutt’s announcement that Google was cracking down on guest blogging.
Asides from responding to news or the current hot topic of the week, another idea is to ask your own audience to submit a question.
Planning the Promotional Campaign
Before emailing everyone, it is a good idea to plan out your own promotional campaign. Although the featured bloggers are likely to share it out, the host blogger also has a responsibility to promote it heavily.
In this case, there were a few sites that did daily and weekly roundup posts that I had to inform right away. Media outreach and press releases are other channels that I had to be prepared to submit to right away.
Even after the initial buzz dies down, I will still be promoting the post through guest blogging and sharing through online communities. Planning the promotion is important because without proper planning, you can miss some opportunities to promote your content.
After planning the promotion, reaching out to experts was the next step. This particular outreach involved reaching out to some people I had previous contact with as well as some cold outreach.
Building Relationships & Cold Outreach
I did a few things to build relationships with experts including posting comments on their blogs, email outreach, participating in communities they were in and light engagement on social media.
Not surprisingly, asking people I had engaged with before to contribute was more comfortable. A few people were still too busy though.
Some cold outreach was required to get over 40 experts to participate. I had already been following a lot of them so being familiar with their content and who they are was helpful.
Allowing enough time is another important step. Although providing a response to a question may seem easy, some people will take the time to think it through and write up a really good response. Some responses took time to come in, but since my deadline was over a week, I was able to get a good response rate.
Design and Organization
Creating a good user experience was something that I focused on while creating the post.
1) Create a pinable header so that people can save it to Pinterest
Since I had some Pinterest experts, having images was a must. I created a simple header using a stock image, Pinwords, and Paint for Windows. I’m no graphic designer, but the availability of tools and stock images make it easy to create simple graphics.
2) Internal Page Hyperlinks
I also created hyperlinks to each expert’s contribution so that people could easily navigate to it. This took a little time to do, but creates a good user experience.
3) Influencer Images
With Google images and other expert roundups, I was able to easily locate images for each expert and resize them to 100 x 100.
4) Organize the post into categories
I created categories for the experts, in case people were looking for advice from a certain group of people. Segmentation also makes long posts easier to read.
5) Write good bios for the contributors
Writing the bios for each contributor also took a good amount of time and involved researching their “About” pages for details. A good bio will explain why each contributor is credible and also encourage visitors to visit their blogs.
This step is often overlooked by most bloggers when they create expert roundup posts. But readers will often not know all the contributors to the roundup, so it is important to let the readers know why the experts are credible and a little bit about who they are.
Promotion
Like the other experts that shared the post through social media, I shared it to my social media followers first. Then I sent an email to my list.
Then I submitted to bookmarking and voting sites, like Bizsugar and Kingged.
After the post got Buzzsumo’s top shared post of the week, I also sent out a press release through PR Newswire. It’s hard to tell how much effect it had, although I almost got an interview from it from a TV station in Australia (the producer emailed me, but might have already filled the interview spot before I got to reply).
These tweets might have helped a little too.
My promotional efforts are far from over. I plan to continue to promote through social media, email outreach and guest posting.
Lessons Learned
I don’t plan on doing another expert roundup for a while, but when I do, there are definitely some things I would do differently:
1) Notify everyone through social media
I like how Larry and Mark notified everyone through social media. Although I had intended to email everyone individually, social media was faster and easier. Larry and Mark saved me a lot of emailing, although I did email a lot of people to say thanks.
2) Organization
Although I was organized on some level, I still missed quite a few experts. I have some on my spreadsheet, some on Twitter and I’m subscribed to some by email.
I also set a tight deadline for myself considering the amount of work required in addition to other things I needed to do. To meet the deadline, I decided at some point to stop emailing experts and start organizing the post.
3) Build My Audience Further
I also plan on building my own audience and blog further on my own. Having a high traffic blog and a larger audience will make my site even more appealing for expert participation.
4) Continue Building Relationships
One of the most popular pieces of advice on the roundup was to build relationships. So continuing to connect with new people and build existing relationships is something I will continue to focus on.
Too many expert roundup emails? Ideas for opting out
Finally, this discussion wouldn’t be complete without addressing another important issue. Some experts aren’t looking for additional exposure and are perhaps tired of getting expert roundup requests. I’ve seen a few popular bloggers complain about getting too many roundup emails.
Here are a few ideas for opting out. It probably won’t eliminate requests, but may reduce them somewhat:
1) State above your contact form that you don’t participate in expert roundups
Or that you require a certain amount of traffic or subscribers due to your busy schedule or any other requirements. You can also identify topics that you are interested in contributing to.
2) Use contact form filters
Use a contact form with “Expert roundup” as one of the pull down subject lines. Have these emails filtered into a separate folder where you can view them later if you want.
Of course this won’t eliminate all unwanted requests, but it may reduce them significantly.
3) Hire a gatekeeper
Having someone else check through and filter your emails makes a lot of sense if you are a busy blogger. Email can take up a lot of your time and prevent you from focusing on doing your most productive work.
Once your blog becomes popular, consider hiring someone else to filter your emails and only send you the types of emails you want to see.
So what do you think?
Are expert roundups a good idea? Or will they die out one day? Let me know in the comments below.
