The Push and Pull of Blog Promotion: Part 1

How could I grow my blog audience?  Outside of the following of friends, family and colleagues, it was time to source methods of attracting new readers?   I had been using Facebook for the sole purpose of social connecting.  I had registered a Twitter handle months before, but had sent less than a dozen tweets.  I was intimidated by the new language and etiquette that were quite foreign. 

It was time to marry my traditional marketing experience with practical use of social media.  I needed to find ways to both get the posts out to readers and bring them directly to the blog site.   This stage of ‘going social’ started to feel like I was driving in my own lane again. 

I went to my marketing roots for direction.  Traditional marketing defines the push and pull strategy as the seller’s push of a product or service to the consumer, compared to the pull of said commodity by that consumer.  The push could be a store sending me a flier to sell shoes, versus my pull of calling the store to inquire about a sale of shiny red pumps. 

Social media adds a new layer to push and pull marketing.  It drives consumers to action from the convenience of their own computer, tablet or smartphone.  Books are downloaded and read without ever visiting the bookstore.  Travel is arranged over the internet and via email communications.  Merchants for clothing, jewelery and so much more – rely on the ability to both push offers to buyers and pull buyers to their sites for instant deals to be closed. 

TIP:  In this era of immediate gratification, it is more critical than ever for sellers to have a succinct pitch to ignite that deal.  After much trial and error, I learned to spark interest in 100 words or less.

Social-izing My Push Marketing

Posting a picture or details of a promotion pushes product over social media to potential buyers.  One may choose to receive information from a supplier by being a Twitter follower or ‘liking’ a business page on Facebook.  A seller may expect you are a partially qualified purchaser, in that you have indicated an interest by agreeing to participate. 

In order for a prospect to gain qualifications, a seller needs to know if they are interested in the product or service, do they have the authority to make a purchase decision, and do they have the funds to buy.   If the supplier has created a ‘sponsored post’ on Facebook or a “promoted Tweet” on Twitter, the audience is unqualified and considered mass market, with which the deal close ratio is much smaller. 

I wasn’t ready to invest cash into a sponsored promotion.  Since I needed the practical experience with Facebook and Twitter, I invested many hours of my time learning the tricks of the tools.  Once the skills started to develop, both sites became rather addicting.  Making likeminded connections is a natural activity.  Learning to authentically attract followers to push content toward took more time. 

Communicating on ‘The Social’ needs to be true to its name, social communication.  The conversation is friendly chitchat where people with common interests share thoughts, quotes and resources that might be of importance to the audience.  The goal is motivating people to sign-up for your blog without sounding like begging for followers or being too pushy. 

The benefit of pushing content out is the consistency of reader contact.  The blogger maintains control of how often content is viewed.  It is critical to achieve balance between keeping the audience interested and informed, yet avoid inundating them with an overwhelming amount of information and risk pushing them away.  Empathy is a key quality in achieving that balance. Put yourself in the position of your audience.  Does your content offer something beneficial or is it completely self-serving?  Followers want to know that we are putting them first.

The downside of push marketing is that you are playing on the purchaser’s turf, as opposed to your own.  For example, pushing out an email or RSS feed sends the most current content to a reader, but it does not entice the audience with other posts or advertisements that might be seen if the reader was pulled to your own blog site.   

Part two of promotion will explore how I went from ‘being pushy’ to dragging people to my blog – with pull marketing tactics. Subtlety is not my greatest strength, but I’m adjusting.

Next column: The Push and Pull of Blog Promotion:  Part 2