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How To Relaunch A Blog: First Week Of Social Marketing

I’m going to explain exactly what I did within my first week to relaunch a blog and provide as many insights aspossible on the effectiveness of the different tactics I used to generate traffic, engagement, clicks, leads, actionsand build connections. This should hopefully give you an idea of how you can improve upon my tactics when youcome to relaunch a blog of your own.

This blog was officially relaunched on Saturday 17th November, 2013.

Background

This blog was first launched in April 2011 as a platform to develop my writing skills.

I had 47 existing blog posts before the blog relaunch.

The blog built up around 30 organic comments during this time.

It received negligible amounts of views prior to relaunch.

Before April 2011, I used no marketing strategies to promote this blog, other than sharing a link to myfriends in social media whenever I published a blog post.

The design changed a few times before I relaunched the blog. This no doubt lost some SEO value that Ipreviously may or may not have built up (watch a Matt Cutts video here for a better explanation)

Before I relaunched my blog, I conducted some research and analysis to formulate my strategies and tactics. Asthey say, failing to plan is planning to fail. Here is a quick recap on what I did in the run-up to relaunching my blog.

Research. Analysis. Strategy.

Redesigned the blog myself. I started with the WordPress Responsive theme and made some heavycustomisations. How do you like it? (you can learn how to install and customise a WordPress bloggingtheme here.)

Spent time optimising and refreshing my existing content.

Undertook tactic analysis, keyword analysis, content analysis and audience analysis.

Bought some amazing social media software called BuzzBundle to help me “listen” to numerous socialnetworks. This would enable me to find out who is already talking about my content before I published it. Iwanted to track conversations and be able to jump straight in with ready-suited content.

Updated social profiles and wider online accounts to accommodate new blog updates.

Finished my eBook, which you can request for free here!

Developed a content calender.

Developed a content evolution process (this needs it’s own article!). To summarise, I created a “guidedpath” for my content so that returning visitors would not be reading random articles on various topics.Instead, the content would flow and complement each other.

Before I jump in and start discussing my first week’s blog activities, you should read my article “ Social MediaCampaign Launch: Checklist” which should give you some detailed information on what you can do prior torelaunching your blog or wider social media campaigns.

Right, so the relaunch day came and I got stuck straight in!

Relaunch

The first thing I did was start writing more content, with a goal to make it REALLY compelling. My content calenderI created as a result of my social listening, research and analysis, looked like this:

I formulated a strategy for promoting each blog post I would publish, which gave me the substance for writing mysecond post-launch article. You can read my article “How To Promote New Blog Posts For Mass Exposure” whichoutlines all my strategies and tactics I used.

I stuck to my blog promotion guidelines throughout the whole week, although there were some additional tactics Iincorporated as well. These included:

Blog commenting on nearly all of the articles I sharedI thought this was important for two reasons. Firstly, I wouldn’t be “blind” sharing content – I didn’t want torecommend content to my audiences that I hadn’t even read. Secondly, as the articles that I would be sharingwould be relevant to my blog, I could offer my thoughts, opinions and advice in the comments section and it couldgenerate targeted traffic back to my blog.

Quora question answering

I spent more time than I previously anticipated answering questions based around my content, in order to engagewith people who were already looking for help.

Inbound.org discussionsSimilar to my above reasoning for Quora. I spent much less time than I did with Quora, yet more than what Isuggest in my blog promotion article.

Re-activated my Triberr accountI have used Triberr in the past to connect with other bloggers and benefit from mutual content sharing, so Idecided to reactivate my account and start requesting to be accepted into “tribes”.

Blog ContributionsThis happened more by coincidence than design. I reached out to a few people I have shared common onlinesocial spaces with for a while to get their feedback on my blog. The conversations developed into wanting tocontribute to my blog and a few said they would submit articles in the coming weeks. They also asked me in returnto do the same, so this lead to yet another strategy I hadn’t anticipated using for the first week…

Guest PostingAfter speaking to a few people multiple times and deciding on possible angles of approach, I decided to submitarticles as guest posts to their blogs. I haven’t received confirmation that they have been published yet, so itwould not have affected my performance this week, but here is a quick breakdown of the posts I submitted andwhere they are heading:

Improving Your Social Media Campaigns Using Graphic Design – Smart Insights

Social Media “Influencers” – Social With It

20 Premium WordPress Themes you don’t want to miss – Krystle’s Virtual Assistant Services

I spent a lot of time engaging with people in different social spaces. I took my content directly to the people whenappropriate using BuzzBundle, offering a helpful resource to people who were in discussion about my article topicalready.

I made it my priority to remain engaged with both my own audiences and with people outside my online circles,who were having conversations around my content matter. While I was awake, I probably replied to everycomment on every platform with less than an hour delay! I also decided to extend my scope by joining moreLinkedIn groups, Google+ Communities and Facebook Groups.

I manually submitted my blog to a few directories and search engines that I wasn’t indexed for originally. I thinkmost, if not all, haven’t come back to me with confirmation it’s been listed (not even sure they will?) so I don’t thinkthis has had any impact as of yet.

From all my sharing and commenting, I ended up reading a hell of a lot of content. Here are the best 6 articles Iread this week:

Matt Cutts article/video on image optimisation

120 Ways To Promote a Blog… Better!

Turning Fans and Followers into Fanatics and Friends for Life

How To Blow Your First Time Blog Visitors Away (And Keep Them Coming Back)

How to Deal with Social Media Complainers (Infographic)

7 Crucial Steps for Successful Blogging

Then… Disaster!

In the middle of the first week, whenever I tried to use BuzzBundle it would crash my computer. I got in touch withsupport and they were very helpful – arranging a TeamViewer session with me to diagnose the issue. Andrei took

control of my computer and ran some tests, which took a while, but ended up finding the problem. I was told anew patch would be released to me within the next two weeks, but this meant my “listening” strategy for engagingand promotion would be severely hampered for the rest of the week. This led to a serious reduction in productivityand efficiency for my most effective method of blog promotion. Shame.

So… what happened?

The Complete Stats

Here is a breakdown of the real performance of all my tactics and strategies and what it meant for differentmetrics. If you want to learn how you can setup and optimise your Google Analytics dashboards, read my articlehere.

Blog Metrics

Social Media

Search Engine Rankings

Leads

I received one direct lead this week. It’s not clear if this was a result of my blog relaunch, or past marketingexposure/efforts, but it’s worth highlighting the real value in social lead generation.

Ezine Articles

My articles were only published and live for 3 days of the week after waiting for moderation (it can take a lot longerso I’m happy to get fast-tracked after a few conversations with an Ezine moderator!). A quick breakdown includes:

“Lesser” Networks

Networks like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, BizSugar all were pretty bad. In fact, they probably generated less than10 unique visitors between them, with zero engagement. I can’t complain much though, as these networks werenot a priority of mine and as such, I put little to no effort into trying to engage on them. I was mostly justbroadcasting content to them as part of my blog promotion routine, with the aim of engaging if anyone acted onmy posts.

Affiliate Marketing

I promote products that I have used myself and believe would be beneficial to other social media managers andenthusiasts. Here is a quick recap on the affiliate clicks and impressions:

Quick Analysis Overview

Quality Not QuantityIt’s important to remember that, while generating traffic isimportant, the audience value is of paramountimportance. Why would you care if you had thousands ofdaily visits if no one ever read your content or acted uponit?

So with that in mind, I thought I would share somefeedback I received throughout the week.

If you’ve read my article on how to promote blog posts, then you might recall me saying that Ezine is notoriouslystrict on quality guidelines. I thought I’d post this to reinforce something that definitely needs reinforcing – IREALLY tried to ensure everything I wrote was quality. Well, Karen thinks so

Social MarketingTo use a famous quote from Lord Sugar in a slightly different context, I should “Smell what sells”.

LinkedIn was the highest referral traffic social network: I’m going to push forwards by joining more groupsand actively contributing more to discussions. One thing I didn’t do much was use the homepage updatestream to spot networking or promotional opportunities.

Quora under-performed from what I expected. I don’t think my content, engagement or timing was thereason why it was ineffective, so I’m going to spend less time on it in future.

Google Plus also underperformed. I’m going to spend more time engaging and less time broadcasting orpromoting in the future.

Pinterest was shocking with 1 unique visitor all week. I have read a few articles that recorded Pinterestgenerating significant traffic – I didn’t experience any. I could have put a lot more effort into commentingand engaging, but I will probably maintain a quick broadcasting approach to pinning and repinning in thefuture and not allocate more time to it other than that.

Facebook and Twitter performed as expected, so I will try to build on my strategies for these networks.

These slight adjustments to my tactics and approaches should improve my social domain-related performance.Spending more time on better performing networks has to. Or so one would expect…

I’ve also included a quick recap on my keyword strategy. I picked relevant keyword phrases instead of single,competitive keywords in order to have more chance of ranking in search engines.

“Social media manager” and “freelance contract” were always going to be hard to rank in 7 days, but thererespective positions are not too bad considering they’re competitive keyword phrases.

Overall, I’m happy with the other two article rankings for now – it’s a good start and I’m by no means anSEO expert. Remember, I only used social marketing strategies to promote my blog relaunch.

How to Relaunch a Blog: Conclusion

It’s been a long week! I think I’ve got a good idea of what went right and what I could have done better. Hopefully,you have learned something from my experiences of relaunching a blog and can improve your own strategies.

While pondering on what I could have done better, I can’t help but think that after BuzzBundle went down, I wastrying to be in too many places at once and was spreading myself too thin. BuzzBundle fortunately solves thisissue, but my contingency of manually “listening” to the social platforms could have been more productive. I thinkthe traffic graphs highlight this too, with a steady increase up until BuzzBundle broke, then they dropped for thenext few days.

I’ve also been able to better understand my own limitations in social marketing and found areas where I canimprove. Timing is key with so many other initiatives going on in the background, so I can definitely improve myefficiency and productivity even more here. I think that if I didn’t discover a few things like this, the exercise wouldhave been in vain.

Finally, if you are thinking of launching or relaunching a blog around the same niche, then I think the mostimportant things to take from this include:

Do your research! It WILL improve your first period after relaunching a blog.

Choose your networks and channels wisely and stick to what is working.

Remember to engage! Social marketing is about people, not software. You can’t get to know robots andthey definitely won’t engage back.

What’s Next?

Stay tuned in to see how my blog progresses after a month of inbound marketing. I will write another report likethis, but using the data from the whole month for a better sample. Here’s a teaser of what content is coming in thenext few week’s or so…

A thought leadership piece based around your strongest quality in life and how you can use it for socialmarketing.

Content evolution strategy.

A day in the life of a social media marketer

How to speed up your WordPress blog

Hopefully a follow-up on my guest post on Social With It (which was called Social Media “Influencers”)asking some Top Industry experts their thoughts.

I will also predict that when BuzzBundle is back, various metrics will dramatically improve. Being able to find outexactly who is talking about specific things you have content waiting for, within a few clicks, is so great that Icannot say enough about the software. It takes all the trolling and hard-work out of social listening and allows youto organise your time more efficiently, while maximising your output.

I’ve also been accepted for authorship on Social Media Today. Stay in the loop by subscribing to my blog orfollowing me in social media and I’ll be sure to let you know when that article is published!

Is there anything you want me to write about specifically in the coming weeks? If you let me know what you wantto learn more about, then I’ll take all suggestions on board.

If I may, could I ask you how you think I can improve? Any constructive criticism would be much appreciated, soplease leave your suggestions in the comments box.

How would you have relaunched a blog differently?

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