In the last post of our LBFB Series we discussed content distribution and how your blog should be your primary focus.

Today we’ll talk about relevance, and specifically how it relates to your content and your outreach – or your spokes.

The first step is knowing how you want to be known, what you want to be known for, and who you want to know you.

And of course… why. The “why” is all important.

Having a definitive answer will help you target your market appropriately, grow your readership faster, dramatically improve your conversion rate, and of course build a highly responsive and profitable mailing list…

If you don’t yet have a clear vision of the how, what, who & why for your online business – stop here and do some brainstorming.

If you need help, or want some input & feedback, join us at my forum.

“All of the subscribers on any one list should have a common interest which you serve with relevant content.

Relevance is huge for managing deliverability and making sure that subscribers not only stay subscribed but help you recruit more visitors to your site. It’s easy to stay relevant as long as your blog stays on topic and powers mailings to your list.” -Chapter Two, Page 11

You Just Published a Blog Post. Now What?

Relevance begins with the content on your blog. You know your target market, and you write content that specifically answers their questions or solves their problems.

Depending on how your mailing list is set up, your subscribers may automatically receive notification of your new blog post by email through a Blog Broadcast – or you may have to email them manually.

The same goes for your social media channels. You may have plugins or programs set up to automatically ping each of your channels, or you may share your new blog post on each channel manually.

Personally, I prefer to share my latest post on each individual channel or network myself and do not use any automation for my social media marketing.

Why?

Relevance.

Each social media site has it’s own system for connecting people and content. On Twitter it’s @’s and Hashtags, on Tumblr it’s Tags, on Facebook it’s @’s, On Google+ it’s +’s, etc.

If you automate your updates through one program, you can only “get it right” in one place. You’ll end up with Twitter Hashtags on Facebook, or @’s that don’t connect to anything. Which is IRrelevant.

Let me just hop over to Facebook real quick and find you an example. It won’t be hard – a lot of people automate their updates. Ahh – here you go:

See what I mean? (No offense to Jim – he rocks!) When you see things like this in your Facebook stream, it doesn’t make any sense. The @’s aren’t hyperlinked and the hashtags are usually irrelevant. It creates an unnecessary disconnect.

It only takes a few seconds – okay, a few minutes tops – to visit each channel individually and post your update appropriately for that specific channel.

And it’s definitely worth the few minutes you invest, because the right attributions can spread your message much further!

Not only will it be more relevant to your readers and followers, but the right attributions can get your update TONS more exposure.

Marketing On The Micro-Level

Once I publish a blog post, I immediate share it on:

• Google+
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Tumblr
• Pinterest (if relevant)

… and of course to my email list via Aweber’s Blog Broadcast email notification. I don’t personally use Social Bookmarking sites to bookmark my own posts, but I do have buttons on each post that make it easy for my readers to stumble/bookmark my content.

I would love to hear your thoughts. How do you maintain relevance? Which “spokes” do you use to promote your content and reach your readers? And if you automate, what do you use and why?

Next in the series we’ll dig into Chapter Three and discuss some of the most common fears and concerns with Email Marketing. Stay tuned!

Best,

p.s. If you don’t yet have a copy of List Building For Bloggers, and you want to follow along in the series this month, grab a copy here and use the coupon code “clicknewz” for $10 off. That makes it only $14.95!