4 Simple Steps to Enrich and Distribute your Blog Content

I have been encouraging  few people to start blogging in their chosen area of interest.While one can choose any of the free blogging tools like blogger, wordpress etc, what is important is to write blogs with a theme and a personality. Even more important is to create original content and establish a connect with readers.But most blog initiatives fail due to inertia. Here is how we can make it an interesting activity:

4 Simple things to do when starting to blog:

• Design
• Visual Appeal & Purpose:Use one of the simple design Layouts given as a part of the blog tool kit and provide a good write up about the purpose of the blog.
• While writing content you can enrich the blog by getting related content and  contextual images through a tool called Zemanta
• Track



Analytics Dashboard

• Ability to track your visitors and other related measurements are very important. Sign up for a Google analytics account and embed the tracking code into the blog template. Start measuring important metrics like visitor count, source of traffic. This will help identify content distribution points
• Set up Blog Distribution tools
• Include a Sharing Service button like Add This as a part of the blog template. This will help to distribute content through social media platforms like twitter,Facebook etc
• Email setup: Blogger has a widget for visitors to sign up for email alerts.Alternatively use any of the feed management tools
• Create an RSS feed option for your blogs using the widget "Subscribe To" offered by blogger.  Go to the Design Tab>> Page elements to add these and many more widgets.
• Distribute your blog: Using the above mentioned Distribution tools you can distribute & promote your blog content
• To Start with,send emails to your contacts using the email option in your blog.. Once you publish the blogpost an email icon will appear at the bottom of the post. Use this to distribute/promote the blog. This will work well to get first time visitors to the blog site. Subsequently,outbound services like emails are subject to laws of diminishing returns
• Use "Add this" and share the blogpost in Twitter,Facebook, Linkedin or any Social Media Platform that you and readers frequently visit. Facebook and Linkedin have worked wonders for my blogs
• Use Feed Management tools like Feeburner
• To help visitors to get RSS feeds of your blogpost onto their Readers like Google Reader or Klipfolio.
• To provide email subscription facility to the visitors to get your blog posts via email
• Feedburner like feed management tools also help to Analyze, Optimize,Publicize and Monetize your blog content
• For more elaborate ways on content distribution read Chris Brogan's Post

Guess this will be a good starting point to make blog writing an interesting activity. I am sure each one of us is curious to know about the visitors to the blog site and to understand what works and what doesn't.Once you see some visitors coming to your site and posting comments then there will be positive pressure to deliver  interesting blog content on a regular basis. Commitment leads to Consistency.

BTW, I am going to use all the above mentioned content distribution techniques to promote this blog post :-).