What to do with your article
Ding! Or perhaps Boink!, Toot! or, conceivably, Burp! The sound of your email arriving chimes through the office, and you race to your desk. There it is… your brand new WordHound article.
You read through it, your smile growing ever-brighter. “They did it!”, you gasp. A tiny tear of joy appears as you breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that you left your content creation in the right hands. Then you print it out and frame it.
Well, that’s what we like to imagine is going on in your office. Don’t ruin it.
But what are you supposed to do now?
Reaching potential
We’re good, but we’re not miracle workers! We can transform your brand message into our powerful words, but the impact that these words have is really all down to what you choose to do with them.
According to Marketing Week, less than half of all online campaigns manage to reach their target audience. Why? It’s because there are many businesses out there who simply aren’t doing enough with their quality content to ensure it gets in front of the right peepers.
So, if you’re wondering what to do with your article to maximise its potential, here are five steps you can take.
1. Optimise
Optimising your content is one of the best ways to get it right up there with the best of them in the Google rankings.
While our team will make sure that your content contains the keywords and phrases that your audiences are searching for, especially in the all important H1 – H3 headings, putting in your own little touches before publishing never hurts.
If you’re adding a few of your own images, for example, setting image alt tags with keywords can be a massive boost. Using SEO tools like Rank Math can also help to make sure your fabulous article can easily be found online.
2. Build your rep
OK. So people can find your article. Great! But do they trust it? The winning combination of your message and our words will be pretty much doomed unless readers feel they can trust what they’re reading.
The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer survey shows that only one third of consumers trust brands, which creates something of an obstacle to building a loyal customer base.
While our team will support ideas and statistics in your content with relevant links, you may wish to add a few of your own internal and external links to authoritative industry resources, to instil trust and associate with trusted leaders.
3. Publish
It will be obvious to everyone who’s ever even heard of the internet that, at some stage, you’ll need to publish your content. The big question is… where?
The first place you should publish your content is on your own website. If you don’t already have a business blog, we can recommend WordPress, as it’s easy to use, it’s cost-effective, and you don’t need any HTML or FTP experience.
Adding a new post to your blog is simple, but if you need a bit of a helping hand, this beginner’s guide to publishing a piece of content in WordPress takes you through each stage of the process, step by step. If it’s not your idea of a good time though, we’re happy to post it for you.
4. Share
Publishing to your own website is a good idea, but publishing only to your website is a bit like putting all your eggs in one basket, putting the basket in a cupboard, and then only inviting people you know to inspect the cupboard’s contents. (OK, perhaps some random people will discover your cupboard and its superb basket of eggs by accident. Burglars, for example. Or the gas man.)
Er – anyway, you’ll be reaching your existing customers, but your content won’t be getting in front of those all-important potential customers who may not know you exist yet.
Sharing to social media channels (especially those channels that are likely to be used by your target audience) is a really great way to expand your reach.
Use hashtags to make your content easy to find. And if you want even more of a boost, tag WordHound and we’ll share your article with our audiences, too.
5. Follow up
Don’t stop now! Even though you may have done everything you needed to, and ticked all the boxes for getting your new WordHound article in front of the people that matter most, now isn’t the time to sit down and take a rest. It’s not fair to give your audience a taste of the good stuff and then snatch it away.
Even though you may have just received your new article, now is the time to start thinking about another one, and talking to us about your next piece of content writing. And don’t worry if you can’t think of a new idea straight away; we’ve got ideas aplenty.
Don’t forget to check in!
Finally, the most important* task of all… let us know you love your article! Yes, we know you’re excited to start adding to your blog and begin sharing your content all over social media, but nothing makes us, and our writers, happier than a happy client.
So now that you’re a big name in the digital space, don’t forget about us here at WordHound. We’d really love to hear what you thought of our work.
*OK, maybe the third or fourth most important task, but it does brighten our day up a bunch
