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Mark at 45n5 emailed me last week about an interesting post he made on his blog. He addresses the issue of the pre-post gameplan and bases it off of a quote from Gray

“Content without promotion is like locking William Shakespeare in a closet to write for you, you’ll have great novels that no one will ever know about or read.”

I think this is one of the most overlooked aspects of blogging. Many new (and yes even experienced) bloggers think that if they just put content out there then people will find it. It’s true that it is much easier to promote a new blog than it is to promote a new website, but if you’re doing absolutely nothing to promote your content then you’re probably not going to get much out of your blog in terms of reach. You have to be willing to actively promote the content on your blog that you think is particularly good.

Letting Other Bloggers Know You Exist

I touched on this a little bit in my post: Little Known Link-building Secret - Being Friendly in which I talked about the simple method of networking with other bloggers in your content area and how beneficial that is. Mark gives a great list of ways to “pitch” your posts to other bloggers in an aggressive but non-spammy way.

Emailing industry friends with new posts should only be done when you think you have a particularly good article in my opinion. You don’t want to get the reputation of being that spammy guy who lets people know everytime you make a post. However, if you moderate yourself and pick and choose which content to introduce to other bloggers you’ll more often than not get a positive response.

When Should I Post?

This is another big question to take into consideration when building your pre-post gameplan. This varies from niche to niche as well as the specific type of blog you’re running (editorial, news, tutorials, etc). I’ll go ahead and drop a big secret of mine: I post when I think of something interesting to write about. Could I get more out of my posts if I posted at different times? Probably. Quite honestly, however, it’s just hard for me to find the time to pick and choose when I want to post. That’s not to say that researching the best posting times isn’t worthwhile.

One thing I’ve definitely noticed is that posting my “Digg-worthy” articles late at night tends to get them frontpaged around noon EST the next day. That is when getting frontpaged is most beneficial because there is less competition than during the evening and that is when Digg’s traffic is really starting to pick up.

Should Every Post Have a Pre-post Gameplan?

Mark says they should, but I’m not so sure. Practice does make perfect, but I think there is a point in everything where it just becomes overkill. Once you have your niche figured out, the “A-list” bloggers targeted, and a decent network of friends in the industry all that’s left is to write content worth promoting.

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