5 Daily Tasks You Should Perform as a Marketer and Blogger

August 6, 2013 by Daniel Sharkov|

When it comes to blogging and internet marketing, some of the most asked questions revolve around
creating engagement and generating traffic.

And now that social media plays such a vital role in any online undertaking, you should care to build your brand through the social networks. You should care to spark curiosity and interest among your target audience.

If you are into blogging,
you should also care to do some self-promotionand spread the word about your content. And even though achieving real results isn’t as straightforward as it might sound, there are some simple actions that could give you a big helping hand.

Today’s post is namely about those actions!

In the next paragraphs you will discover five seemingly insignificant tasks
that are helping me generate consistent traffic and engagement and that will also help YOU.

Scroll down to see which they are and how performing  them will affect your results!

1. Get in Touch with Your Twitter Followers

Yeah, I know you’ve heard a thousand times over that communication is key. And although a lot of tweeps would reply to their followers’ questions and requests, a far fewer percentage would actually be the one to spark engagement.

That’s namely what I am referring to here – you should be the one to start the talk.
Why is that important? I’ve found this to really be the core of  how you build relationships, get people to remember your name and keep sharing your stuff. What you should do every day:

Reply to those who retweet you
– saying thank you is one of the best ways to grab the initial attention. That is why I’d advise you to reply to each and every one who takes the time to share a post of yours. ‘Make sure to thank people by their name. If not visible in their profile, look for an about page on their site. That’ll be a sign you care.

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Look for ways to create discussion
– aside from thanking, you should also try to get people to talk back. A question has always been the best way to achieve that. First look for what was shared. For instance when someone retweets my WordPress pluginspost, one of the questions I ask is if the retweeter has already tried some of those plugins. The more relevant the question, the better the chance to expand the talk. Be careful not to overdo
– Be careful not to bother the same person more than once every few days. If they share more than one of your posts, they will appear several times in your stream. Replying two times or more will feel like you are doing things on autopilot. Follow the folks who engage
– If you are able to create some sort of discussion with someone, make sure to follow them if you haven’t done so already. It’s the next step to solidifying your relationship with that person.

NOTE:
I’d advise you to install TweetDeck. This desktop app allows you an easier access to all your mentions plus notifications when someone mentions you.

2. Approve and Reply to Comments

There are two main reasons why you should care about getting comments on your blog: They add up to your credibility
– while getting retweets and shares in general doesn’t take more than a click of a button, comments require more time, so they mean a higher level of engagement to your content. Comments in most cases mean that your readers are finding your content relevant and useful. They let you establish new contacts
– similarly to replying on Twitter, replying to your comments is a great way to get to know new people, that could eventually support your brand or buy a product you are promoting.

That is namely why you should take the time to check your comments at least once a day. Don’t only look in the unapproved comments,
but also in your spam folder. Sometimes you will see perfectly legitimate comments in the latter. Unspam them and reply straight away.
I’d recommend you to follow the procedure twice a day – once in the morning and once in the evening. That’ll leave enough time for new comments.

NOTE:
Not all of your readers will leave a comment, but a lot will read the comments. So the more you have,
the more time people will spend on your blog , which might later result in a conversion for you.

3. Make Sure You Have Tweets in Your Buffer

What’s Buffer in the first place? Well simply put, Buffer is by far
the best way to schedule social media updates for Facebook, LinkedIn and most importantly Twitter. And a second question…
why would you want to schedule Twitter updates? Firstly you have to tweet a lot in order to draw the attention, because most people are following at least a couple of hundred tweeps. If you share an update only once or twice daily, very few people will see it due to that huge amount of “noise”. Secondly you want to spread your tweets evenly so that different people can see them. For instance the best time to share an update for your target audience might happen to be 3AM.

If you go for the free version of Buffer, you will only have ten scheduling spots (you can expand them by getting referrals though). That is why everyday you need to take note of when your last update will expire and fill your buffer again.

Create a sticky notewhere you’ll write down when your last scheduled update will go live Create a document with the tweets (post title + URL) of your articles for easy buffering Aside from tweets of your articles, every now and then include a quote or two Use If This Then That (more on what IFTT does here) to connect your favorite blogs’ RSS feeds and add their posts automatically to Buffer

4. Don’t Forget to Schedule Triberr Posts

You know Triberr?

Well if you are a blogger, you should.

Triberr lets you connect with bloggers in your niche and share each other’s content.

It’s probably the simplicity of the whole concept that makes it so effective. You connect your blog’s RSS feed and whenever a new post appears there (or you could just install the Triberr plugin), it automatically gets submitted to Triberr
without you having to do a thing.

Then the people who have you in their tribes (that’s why it’s called Triberr) receive that post and can decide to share it on Twitter and other networks (but the focus is mostly Twitter).

If you haven’t signed up, I’d suggest you do so right away.
The additional traffic is well worth the few minutes you need. And if you have an account, I’d advise you to open up Triberr each and every day and look for posts to approve.
There are three reasons why you should do that:

Reciprocation is key
– the best way to persuade someone to share your latest blog post is… well by being to one to share theirs first. Like it or not, but reciprocation can open a lot of doors in the blogging and marketing world. It’s a win-win situation for both sides. You get fresh content
– as I already mentioned, it’s vital to keep your Twitter stream alive. And that’s exactly what you do when you approve an article. Triberr saves you time, since it basically gives you a list of relevant articles that you can read and decide if worth sharing. All in a click of a button. You create new contacts
– I’ve gotten to connect more closely with more than one or two of my tribemates on Triberr. That resulted not only in intense sharing, but also in a couple of guest posts for my blog and me discovering and writing for some pretty neat blogs.5. Write Down an Idea for a Future Post

If you’ve been blogging for more than a couple of months, you’d know that writing isn’t really the difficult part. What can prove trickier, is actually coming up with quality blog post ideas.

More often than not, the problem isn’t the idea itself. The problem comes from having to come up with the idea right before writing the actual article and in most cases facing some deadline.

When you are in a rush it can be quite a challenge to “gather” your thoughts and produce something good.

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So, why not prepare?

I mean there’s nothing bad in being spontaneous,  but it doesn’t always work.

What I do is to take ten minutes every day to write down a good article idea.

But… where do I find the ideas in the first place?

Roundup articles
– I am referring to post like thisone that collect the best content from the passing week. In most cases the posts are separated in categories (as you can see) so it’s easy to find your way.
Simply skimming through the titles and comparing them to your own experiences can be the start of an idea. Twitter lists
– You are missing out if you haven’t created a Twitter list with the influencers in your niche. That way you can always keep  keep an eye on what’s trendy, what others are sharing and what gets the retweets. Long posts
– Stumbled upon an interesting but rather long post? You might want to check out the individual subheadings of that post, pick one and think how you can expand on it and turn it into a headline. Facebook questions
- Asking questions on Facebook is not only a great way to beat EdgeRank, but also a great way to see what people are interested in. Think about something relevant to your niche and
ask your fans about their opinion. That is sure to spark some ideas! Older articles
- Sometimes all you need is your own archive. Go back a couple of months and see what kind of content you wrote back then.
Create a list with the best posts by the amount of social sharing they’ve received and try to come up with an idea based on that.Final Words

That’s pretty much it guys, I really hope you enjoyed the post! Please take a minute to share it with your friends and followers if you did!

Now I’d like to hear your comments! What other daily must-do activities can you add up to the list? Do you agree with the points I’ve shared in the post?

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