NB: This is the 15th installment in The Inspired Solo’s Build a Better Business Blog in One Month series. Designed to help solo lawyers and other professionals boost their blog’s performance, the series consists of a daily lecture and task (or tasks) that focus on one “blog improvement project” at a time. Each post in the series is tagged with “[BBBB1]“. You can start the program at any time. Catch up with other BBBB1 posts here.

Build a Better Business Blog, One Block At a Time

Day 15: Lecture

Hopefully by now, you’ve finally got at least one of your pillar articles ready to go. If not, go back to Day 3 and review the whys and wherefores of pillar content. Then start brainstorming your ideas for pillar articles, develop some ideas, and finally work on your draft. Then join us back here, where, today, we’re going to publish that piece and promote the heck out of it.

Quick Review: Why Pillar Articles Are Crucial For Your Business Blog

Just to hit the highlights of the first post in which we discussed pillar articles, let’s go over the benefits quickly one more time:

• Greater appeal to other blogs/sites for incoming links
• Evergreen – their timeliness fades more slowly than more au courant pieces
• Massive value to the reader
• Creates loyal return readers
• Because they’re longer, you can use h2 and h3 tags more liberally, thus increasing the piece’s “SEO juice”

Publishing Checklist For Your Pillar Articles

Wait! Before you hit “Publish” on that awesome pillar article you’ve slaved over for … what, days now? … let’s take a moment’s pause and go over a few last-minute details that, while not critical, could derail your post’s success if missed:

1. Check your spelling. Really. I mean, you – your eyes – not your spellcheck software on your word processor or (God forbid) your blogging site’s interface. Look at it critically and go over each and every word.
2. Not sure if you’ve used a word correctly? Take the time to look up the definition. Make sure. This piece you’re about to send out into the world is like a little ambassador of your brand. You want to make sure it’s looking sharp, dressed to impress, and that it knows what it’s talking about. Otherwise all the other little ambassadors might make fun of it.
3. Read your post out loud. Yes, all of it, beginning to end, including your headings. I can’t tell you how helpful this one little piece of advice has turned out to be in my experience. I’ve caught things – awkward phrasings, words with unclear meanings, and really bad grammar – that I never would have caught simply glancing over it visually.
4. Double check your links. Are they properly formatted? Do you have a title tag in your HTML that’s brief and properly descriptive? Does each link actually work? If you’re linking to a PDF file or some other download, it’s good form to let your readership know what’s head. Here’s an example:
   

   For more information, you can check out this report on … {include your HTML for your link and your anchor text, then add:} (caution: link is PDF file, 1.8MB size).

5. Preview your post. Once it’s all polished and shiny, hit preview before you publish. You’d be surprised how, despite best efforts, things can get misaligned, or text is placed oddly around a picture. Preview is really the only way to be absolutely sure.

Promoting Your Pillar Articles

There are a host of ways you can effectively market your new pillar article. Here are several suggestions to get you started.

Put The Link In Your Email Signature

Create a new email signature that includes not only your basic contact information but also a quick (one sentence) summary or hook to your new post, and include the URL. If the URL is incredibly long (say, over 30 characters) you might want to visit http://is.gd and shorten it down. If your signature-creating email interface allows you to plug in live links with anchor text, so much the better, but you might also want to put the actual URL in the signature as well, since many prefer plain text emails and won’t see the link.

What’s a good hook? A short one that asks a question the post can answer — that’s one approach. Or a succinct “Learn how to …. ” format — that’s also a good choice. Whatever works for the tone and subject of both your blog and your pillar article will be fine — the key is to get the URL in your email signature block and create some curiosity about it.

Twitter: Blogger’s Best Friend

If you’re not on Twitter yet (and why the heck not, really?) then here’s one more reason you’re falling behind on this amazing tool: when I post a new piece on my blogs, I tweet the URL with a short blurb or hook. I use the built-in URL shortener in TweetDeck to make it fit within the 140-character limit, and then I hit the “enter” key.

And with that, over 2,000 people see my post’s link (between the various followers on my multiple accounts, as I retweet among them for blog posts only, being careful not to overdo it and spam people).

Then those 2,000 people have the ability to retweet — or republish my original tweet — and send out the link to their two thousand-plus friends. And that keeps going. (And so on, and so on …)

If you’re lucky enough to get the attention of, say, @GuyKawasaki, as I did recently, those retweets can be quite impressive. I stopped counting at about 50.

Ask For Input From Colleagues and Bloggers In Your Community

Your blogging community, I mean — remember this day’s tasks?  Send them a short, polite email with a link to your post. Don’t demand a link or even ask for one. Simply state you’ve created a pillar article and you’d really value this person’s opinion; when they have a moment would they mind stopping by and taking a look at it for you?

Now — this only works with bloggers you’ve already begun to create a relationship with, NOT for bloggers you haven’t yet met or had any meaningful exchanges with yet. So, pick your targets carefully.

What About Digg and StumbleUpon?

Some bloggers disagree with me on this, but I see nothing wrong with submitting your own work to Digg or Stumble Upon. Simply be upfront about it — don’t pretend to be a disinterested third party — and describe the post objectively.

Submit To Blog Carnivals

Here’s an easy way to get some traffic. With your pillar articles, especially, you’re likely to find a blog carnival or two that would be interested in that subject matter.

Think outside the box on this one — don’t just head for Blawg Review (although certainly, do that, too!) but think about your targeted readerships again, both primary and secondary. Where would they hang out, virtually speaking? Go there. Submit, submit, submit.

When the carnival is published, regardless of whether you’re in it or not, promote it and send it some traffic. The carnival owners/publishers will see the incoming links and they’ll remember that, most likely, when it comes time to pick the next carnival’s posts.

Day 15 Task: Promote Your Pillar Article

Well, the task ought to be self-evident: publish and promote your pillar article, using the above strategies to get you started. And if you have a favorite blog post promotion tactic that isn’t mentioned, please let the rest of us in on it in the comments!

Also: I’m going on record as volunteering to link to ANYONE’S pillar article that’s produced in the months of June or July 2009, in this blog, as long as you drop me a line, either email or through this site’s comment form, to give me the URL and mention this post or the BBBB1 series. That’s one free link, from The Inspired Solo (a PR4 site) to you, gratis, with my compliments, simply for playing along in the Build a Better Business Blog series! What a deal!