When it comes to content marketing for small businesses, it is every business owners desire to extend the number of people that are exposed to its content. This is known as Reach in the SEO world and represents the number of people a piece of content is exposed to. The content we are talking about can be text, video, or an image (meme).
For the sake of definition, Engagement in SEO means that the person is not only exposed to a piece of content but takes some kind of action with it. Some examples of engagement are like, giving a piece of content a thumbs-up with a “Like”, “Sharing” it with their followers, or “Commenting” on it.
To achieve reach and engagement for SteveBizBlog, I employ a strategy that involves curated content.
Every morning I spend between one to two hours reading business related articles to make sure I maintain my edge on the latest and emerging small business trends.
Each day I find one or two interesting articles with valuable content which I flag. Once a week I review the flagged articles and chose the best four articles to curate in my Monday blog post #PickOfTheWeek.
If I don’t follow an author already, I ensure that I do when I happen to use one of their articles. I also add them to a “list” of authors on Twitter so that I can easily see their future posts/articles.
So, what does a Monday blog have to do with reach and engagement you may ask? Well a few minutes after the post is published on Monday morning, I send the author a tweet commenting on their article, not as an “@Reply” but as an “@Mention”.
For clarity an @Reply is where the first character in the tweet is the @ sign followed by the recipient’s Twitter handle for example,
“@JoeBlow that was a nice post, I liked the way you described…”
An @Reply is only visible by the recipient, @JoeBlow in this case, and anyone that follows BOTH you and the recipient.
Instead, I use the @Mention where the @ followed by the recipient’s Twitter handle appears in the middle of the tweet somewhere. For example,
“That was a nice post @JoeBlow I liked the way you described…”
In an @Mention the post is visible by ALL your followers and all the followers of the recipients.
By using an @Mention vs an @Reply my post gets an extended reach.
Part of my goal is to engage with the author about their article and begin a dialog but in addition, I also want to make my audience aware of the author and the author’s audience aware of my content too. Therefore, I also include a shortened link to my curated #PickOfTheWeek post in the tweet. For example, “I loved your article about … @JoeBlow. It is an interesting concept that I shared with my followers in my #PickOfTheWeek” followed by the shortened permalink to the Monday blog post where the article was featured. Many times, the author acknowledges the @Mention posts and also makes a short remark about my post that mentions them.
In the end, my audience and the recipient’s audience may discover a new source of interesting content and as thought-leaders, we both are in a position to find a new source of inspiration all while increasing our reach and engagement. A win-win-win for all.
What plans do you have to drive higher reach and engagement with your content?
