Why write a blog?

I almost called this article ‘The lazy guide to marketing’!  I’m a believer in the old adage ‘If you want to find the quickest way to do something, ask a lazy person’.  What am I banging on about?

A blog article can be the foundation for your marketing activity.  Let’s be honest – who wants to reinvent the wheel?  How does this short-cut to marketing work?

The blog article

This can be as short as 300 words or much longer.  Some people like longer articles – as long as there’s value in there and it’s not just a lot of superlatives and flowery prose.

A blog is your base block to share your expertise, show off your knowledge and demonstrate that you know your stuff.

Social media

You could just paste the title and the link into your social platforms, but I prefer to pick out a short piece – one, or maybe two, sentences – that will intrigue and generate curiosity.  300 words can generate four or more posts.  A longer article, many more.

And don’t forget to post the article on your LinkedIn profile as an article.

Newsletter

If your newsletter delivers consistent value your audience will stick with you.  Using one of your blogs as the lead item is a great way to do that.  I usually publish the first 3-4 paragraphs and then a ‘read more’ button to take the reader to the full length article.

I follow this with a promotion or offer and then add any other blogs I’ve written during the month to finish off – just the title and image.

So far, you’ve already got quite a bit of mileage from your article, but it doesn’t stop there.

A podcast

You could paste your article into something like ElevenLabs.io and transform it into a podcast where two hosts discuss it. 

A video

You can turn this article into a video either as a simple talking head, where you talk to the camera, or use InVideo.io to paste the article in and it will create a video for you.

You could also use the audio track as a podcast, if you want something simpler.

A presentation

If you get the opportunity to do a short talk at your networking group, you can drop the article into gamma.app and it will create a slide deck for you to use as background to your presentation.

Lead magnet

If you’ve written a few blog articles around a specific subject, you could edit them into a longer ebook or report to use as a lead magnet.  This is a great way to grow your list.

Email campaign

A longer article can be broken up to create a short series of emails, maybe with one point per email.  This can be your value lead to accompany an offer or promotion.

If you have an e-marketing platform, these can usually be set up as an automated series.

Don’t write your blog, post it and forget it – it can work much harder for you.  You just have to be creative!