My New Blogging Strategy
Three Posts for the Price of One: SEO be Damned!
I find myself in a bit of a self-induced conundrum. My business comes from referrals, but I want people that visit my business page to see that I am a real person who regularly updates and maintains the website. I also have a genuine interest in sharing my techno-messes and (hopefully) consequent techno-victories. I especially love it when someone reads something I wrote and actually responds with a question. The problem is that my business website is not really a place for people to interact with me because it is essentially a glorified business card. On the other hand, using a service like Medium or Tumblr does little to promote my business page.
“Sure,” you say. “Post the same content at multiple sites.”
“But what about those dreaded SEO penalties for posting the same content at multiple places?” I ask. Not to mention the pain of actually posting to multiple sites. Do I even have the time?
Here is my strategy. It is not going to work for everyone entirely (it might not even work for me, in the end), but it is at least a framework from which one might be able adapt to their own needs. The big picture is this: I have a business website built in RapidWeaver, a Tumblr blog, and a Medium publication. I want to be able to write the blog post with the same images and formatting in all three locations. I then want to share the posts through my businesses social media accounts.
Is this even smart? Am I killing my SEO potential by reposting a blog multiple times? All indications as of 2016 is that duplicate content does not have a negative SEO impact, provided the content is original. In fact, if the content is targeted to different groups, as is the case with my three blogging outlets, more people will have the opportunity to review it. This common understanding amongst internet marketers is supported by my own personal experience. But again, I am also not too worried about SEO given that my business is referral based.
So I developed a workflow to get my content at three places (nearly) at once. It all starts with the draft, which I write in Markdown (I use IA Writer, but any default text editor or word processor would do). Markdown is a very efficient means to generate HTML, and it is fully supported by Tumblr. Once I have the text, I look for a new images to add to the project. I consistently name these images with the date and a number and then upload them to a folder on my web host. This way I can easily link back to the images in my document.
(Not to geek out too much, but because I name and store the files consistently, I can use a text expander program to spit out the relevant URL and generate the image name with a shortcut. I use Typinator, but there are plenty of other alternatives out there.)
With my files uploaded to my web server, I can then copy and past my text to Tumblr. Once I post it, I can view the finished product, select and copy it all (including the images) and paste to a new Medium post. I do a little rearranging (move the header image, reclassify the header tags, etc.), but there is very little additional work there.
Two out of three done. For my website, which is designed using RapidWeaver, I use a stack from Joe Workman that automatically imports Tumblr blogs into my website while maintaining my website’s formatting. It took a little work to get the appearance right, but I’m happy with the result.
Now, as far as getting the posts out through social media, I take advantage of Tumblr’s default RSS feed, which I can load to share my posts through my Buffer account. All in, after I’ve drafted my text and found or made any images, it takes me about 5 minutes to post to all three places and schedule the social media posts.
So there you have it — one post done three ways and shared through social media. I know I blew through these steps, but I would be happy to answer any questions or criticisms and expand on any points of interest in a future post.
