Welcome to the final step in our free self-paced course to help you set up your own personal or professional educator blog!
The aim of this step is to go through five things you can do to share and market your blog:
- Make posts ‘shareable’
- Use social media
- Set up an email subscription
- Encourage others to share your posts
- Be an audience
Marketing? Really?
The word marketing has got a bad rap in recent decades. Perhaps it makes you think of cheesy, spammy scams, used car salesmen, or endless infomercials.
This is definitely not the sort of marketing we’re talking about here.
As Seth Godin explains, modern marketing is really using the culture to reach people who want to be reached and offering them something they’re glad to find.
There’s probably many members of the education community out there who would love to find you. So, do them a favor and start marketing your wonderful work!
The Benefits Of Blogging For Yourself
Before we look at building an audience through sharing and marketing your blog, let’s go over the many benefits of blogging just for yourself.
What’s the point of blogging even if no one is reading? Is there a point?
Of course!
Blogging is a fantastic way to reflect and develop your thinking
As Clive Thompson stated in Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better,
Professional writers have long described the way that the act of writing forces them to distill their vague notions into clear ideas. By putting half-formed thoughts on the page, we externalize them and are able to evaluate them much more objectively. This is why writers often find that it’s only when they start writing that they figure out what they want to say.
The research process of blogging is also an excellent way to learn
Take a topic you know a little about or have some interest in, do some research and present it in an easy-to-digest way for others. You might be surprised at how transformative this learning process is!
Having your own online space can present you with career opportunities
Some professionals also enjoy having a blog or website that serves as a digital portfolio. This home base for all your work and credentials can be an advantage for furthering your career.
Becoming a blogger will help you help your students
Teacher-bloggers can be role models for students as digital citizens and writers.
Furthermore, trying out blogging before introducing it to your students can be a comfortable progression for many educators.
Why Sharing And Marketing Your Blog Applies To Everyone
Despite all of the personal benefits of blogging, you can really amplify things by building an audience.
Clive Thompson explains,
…studies have found that particularly when it comes to analytic or critical thought, the effort of communicating to someone else forces you to think more precisely, make deeper connections, and learn more.
Building an audience also means expanding your professional learning network (PLN); there are countless benefits to building a strong network as we explore in our free self-paced PLN course for educators.
So we know there are benefits to having an audience for your blog, but building an audience does take work and it requires you to share and market your posts.
How exactly can you share and market your blog? Let’s take a look…
With the rise of the ‘edupreneur’ some teachers are using blogging for financial benefit, however, we’ll be focusing on sharing and marketing for the non-professional teacher blogger who’s interesting in connecting and learning with others.
You might have put together a fantastic blog post and felt satisfied as you hit the publish button, but your job is not done.
Just because you publish something online, doesn’t mean it will be seen. People won’t know about your post if you don’t share it.
Standing out in a blogosphere populated by millions of people can take work. Fortunately, there are some simple strategies to help ensure your blog post gets an audience.
Blogging is not like writing a high school essay. A long chunk of text on a page is just not going to appeal to your potential audience. They’ll move on.
The first thing you need to do is look at your styling and post layout because let’s face it; people aren’t going to share your post if the content was too difficult to even read.
Our post 10 Tips For Making Your Blog Posts Easier To Read will help guide you through the process of creating easy to read posts.
The Power Of Visuals
We know how powerful visuals are! A Hubspot article tells us,
Eye-tracking studies show internet readers pay close attention to information-carrying images. In fact, when the images are relevant, readers spend more time looking at the images than they do reading text on the page.
Studies have shown that visitors to your blog will probably only read about 20% of your post. People generally scroll through and skim posts. Images give people a reason to stop scrolling.
Through an image, people may be more likely to take in your content and share it with others.
What Sort Of Visuals Can You Make For Blog Posts?
There are all sorts of visuals you can include in your posts. Let’s explore three popular additions to blog posts — social media graphics, infographics, and quotes.
Bloggers often create a graphic to accompany their blog post which makes a social media post stand out. It’s generally just the title of the blog post with an image and the blog URL — perhaps with blogger’s name or social media handle too.
Whenever we create a new post on The Edublogger, we create a simple graphic to go with it.
For example:
There are certain size dimensions that are ideal for different social media platforms as outlined here by Louise M. (Tip: If you’re using Canva which we will explain below, it will generate the correct size automatically).
Infographics
An infographic can be a great way to summarize information or data and make posts more shareable.
The 10 Ways To Make You Blog Posts Easier To Read visual above is an example of an infographic that acts like a ‘cheat sheet’.
Here is another example we prepared for International Dot Day. This sort of thing can really help the time-poor reader.
Quotes
Quotes can be powerful additions to blog posts. They can offer a burst of insightful learning and back up your own thoughts.
In our post on The Edublogger about quotes, we outlined different ways you can use quotes and turn them into shareable graphics.
You wouldn’t want to make every quote into a graphic but it can certainly give your readers something else to focus on and share.
A quote graphic might display the words over an image, pattern, or a block color.
How To Make Visuals For Blog Posts
There are many different ways you can make the sorts of visuals we described above.
There are a number of offline tools available, such as Adobe Photoshop or Indesign, however, online tools are more popular than ever. A lot of these tools are based on templates, so you don’t even need design skills.
Just some online tools for making visuals include:
- Canva (solid free plan with paid options — see below)
- Adobe Spark (free for teachers and students)
- Stencil (free plan allows for 10 creations per month)
- Snappa (free plan allows for 5 downloads per month)
- Pablo (free tool from Buffer)
- Piktochart (free for basic plan with watermark)
If you have any suggestions for web tools, apps, or offline tools be sure to let us know in a comment.
Canva tips and information
Canva is certainly one of the most popular free tools out there for bloggers!
- Canva has millions of users worldwide and is popular in many industries, including education.
- Students under 13 can use Canva if they’re ‘appropriately supervised’. (Read Richard Byrne’s post about this topic for further clarification).
- Canva is a web-based tool but there are also apps for Android and iOS.
- The free plan allows you to make unlimited creations and download them in high quality without watermarks. This sets Canva apart from some similar tools.
- The paid ‘Canva for Work‘ plan gives you access to more templates, images, and icons etc. It also allows you to resize your design without starting again (e.g. you might make something in A4 size then want a smaller version to share on social media). Additionally, you can download your designs with a transparent background (handy for logos, badges, buttons etc.).
- Canva uses a drag and drop interface which is very simple to use but like all tools, does require a little bit of playing around to develop fluency. It’s worth the investment in time!
Check out this post on The Edublogger about Canva for more information and ideas.
Use Social Media
A lot of people who might be interested in your blog posts are hanging out on social media. You want to strategically share your content on social media and make it easy for others to share as well.
There are a few things to keep in mind when sharing your own blog posts on social media
Consider your platform(s)
Teachers are active on different platforms — Twitter has traditionally been very popular with teachers (if you’re new to Twitter you can find out more information here). There are also a large number of teachers active on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc.
You don’t have to be sharing on every platform. Using one or two social media platforms well can be a more successful approach than spreading yourself thin across different networks.
Tailor your message
If you are going to share your posts across various social media platforms, tailor your message to cater to the different audiences and the different ways the platforms are used.
For example, Instagram and Twitter use hashtags more than Facebook. Pinterest tends to center around larger ‘shareable’ images. Twitter has a 280 character limit whereas Facebook allows you to write lengthier posts.
Keep these sorts of details in mind if you’re going to cross-promote your posts. Copying and pasting may not be the best approach.
Repeat, but don’t overdo it
Just because you post something on social media, doesn’t mean it will be widely seen. You might need to post a variation of the message a number of times.
Repeating the same message without variation is not a good idea and is against the rules with some social media channels. On Twitter posting ‘duplicative or substantially similar content’ is not allowed.
To make posting on social media easier, some people use a social media scheduler like Buffer or Hootsuite although use this approach with care. You don’t want to look like a robot!
Make your posts stand out!
We know that each social media platform has its own best practices for formatting updates. Let’s focus on Twitter for a moment and take a look at the sorts of tweets that are more likely to stand out.
You can just share the title of your post and the link but is this really going to be noticed in a busy stream of tweets?
Compare these two tweets about the same post and consider which one would stand out more…
Images, emojis, quotes, summaries of information, GIFs, videos etc. can all help to make a tweet stand out and encourage others to read it, share it, and/or click on the link to the post.
Want more advice about using Twitter and creating shareable content? Check out our Ultimate Guide to Twitter. You might be particularly interested in the examples of tweets that stand out.
Set Up An Email Subscription
How are people keeping up to date with blogs?
Traditionally, people would subscribe to get email notifications of new posts on blogs they enjoy reading. Or they’d use an RSS Feeder (a popular one is Feedly. You can read more about how this works here).
Email and RSS are still being used, however, things have changed a little.
When we did a quick poll of our Edublogs community in July 2018, 61% of respondents indicated that their favorite way to keep up to date with the blogs they like to read is via social media.
Perhaps:
- People are getting more emails than ever before so are becoming more selective with what subscriptions they sign up for. They might only subscribe to a handful of their favorite blogs.
- Some individuals are becoming more satisfied with consuming information serendipitously.
Should I bother with an email subscription?
Social media is a great way to share but here are a few thoughts to keep in mind about the power of offering an email subscription:
- Having an email subscription option is going to allow your most loyal and valuable members of your community to stay in touch with you.
- There are no guarantees that people in your network will see your posts on social media. You can’t control that. Offer your readers a channel to make sure they don’t miss your content.
- Email is much more personal than social media. Your readers can hear directly from you and it can help to build a relationship.
How To Make An Email Subscription
So we’ve established that it’s definitely a good idea to have some sort of option available for readers who would like to subscribe to your blog via email.
Now you have two choices. Do you want to use an automated service? Or do you want to create a handcrafted newsletter style email that you send out on a regular basis?
Automated Email Subscription Widget
If you’re using Edublogs Pro, did you know you can add a simple email subscription widget on the sidebar of your blog?
Subscribers will receive an email automatically to alert them to new posts. You can choose to send a full post, complete with all images, or a post excerpt.
Find out how to activate the email subscription widget here.
Create An Email Newsletter
It’s becoming increasingly common for bloggers to create their own newsletter using an email service provider.
There are many email service providers out there and many are free to use until you reach a certain number of subscribers. If you’re interested in comparing different email service providers, check out this guide from ProBlogger.
When you use an email service provider, you can either:
- Automatically send out emails to people on your list when a new post is published.
- Create a personal email to your email list telling them about your new post(s). Generally, you might give an introduction to the post and ask them to click to visit your blog and read your post. You might send this out every time you publish a new post or at regular intervals (weekly, monthly etc.).
MailChimp Tips And Information
One of the most popular email service providers is MailChimp.
- It is free to use up to 2000 subscribers.
- MailChimp uses a simple drag and drop editor and offers a range of different templates for the design of your newsletter.
- There are also different options for creating sign-up forms. You’ll probably want a sign-up form on the sidebar of your blog but you might also include it at the bottom of your blog posts, in a page on your blog, or as a ‘landing page’ that you can share on social media.
Check out the Getting Started With MailChimp guide for more information.
Getting Started with MailChimp | MailChimp
It’s ideal if people who are reading your posts share it with others. This can be a great way to find new audience members.
Everyone has their own tribe or network. If someone from your network introduces your work to others in their own network, the results can be exponential!
Consider putting a call to action in every blog post asking your readers to share it on social media or share it with colleagues if it resonated with them.
You can also use a variety of plugins to encourage your readers to share your posts.
Let’s take a look at AddThis and Jetpack.
AddThis Plugin
AddThis is a handy plugin for your blog that adds a social share button to every post and page.
You can add a range of buttons above and/or below your posts that readers can click on to share in a variety of ways.
You can choose to display these buttons in different ways.
You can also add the Social Share widget to your blog sidebar so visitors can share your blog with others.
Check out our help guide for more instructions on setting up AddThis.
Jetpack Plugin
Jetpack is a powerful plugin that adds several different features and tools to your blog, some of these make it easier for others to share your posts.
Once you’ve activated Jetpack, you might like to activate:
- Publicize: Makes it easy to share your posts on social networks automatically when you publish a new post. Learn more.
- Sharing: Enables you to add sharing buttons to your posts so that your readers can easily share your content on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks. Learn more.
Check out our help guide for more instructions on setting up Jetpack.
Be An Audience
The final tip is a simple one that’s often overlooked: If you want to have an audience you need to be an audience.
This might involve:
- Subscribing to some blogs you like via email or RSS (e.g. Feedly). Or, following bloggers on social media.
- Sharing blog posts that resonate with you on social media; support other bloggers.
- Leave comments on posts that you enjoyed, leave you curious, or challenge your thinking.
Rather than being a passive reader, try to find a way to be active in your approach to really support others in your community (e.g. sharing, commenting, connecting).
Follow this approach in an authentic way and show genuine interest in others. Apart from learning a lot and building your PLN, you might find your audience begins to build naturally as well.
As you get to know other bloggers, you might also consider guest posting. It could introduce you to a new network of readers and you could be helping a fellow blogger too.
How does guest posting work?
- You might connect with someone who has a small but engaged network of readers.
- Arrange to write a relevant guest post on each other’s blogs.
- The guest post could include a short introduction with a link to your blog, and/or a bio at the bottom of the post.
- Perhaps some of those readers will start following you and vice versa. Win-win!
Maintain Momentum
You’ve made it this far and hopefully you’ve made a great start to blogging. How do you keep it going?
Check out this post which goes through 12 tips and decide what you can focus on as you go forward.
Conclusion: Blogging Is Worth It!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this Teacher Challenge Course on personal blogging. Building your own personal blog takes patience and a commitment to stick with it. Remember, the rewards will be worth it!
As George Couros said as he reflected on his 8 years of blogging,
Blogging has helped my learning grow significantly because I have done it consistently for myself, not necessarily for an audience. Knowing an audience is there though, has made me think a lot deeper about what I share though, and it helps me create a “360 Degree View” of my learning; I do my best to focus on all angles of what I am sharing before I share it.
Dean Shareski has also boldly stated,
I’ve yet to hear anyone who has stuck with blogging suggest it’s been anything less than essential to their growth and improvement. I’ve no “data” to prove this but I’m willing to bet my golf clubs that teachers who blog are our best teachers.
We think so too.
Your Task
Choose one or more of these tasks to complete the final step in this course.
1. Leave a comment on this post about your blogging journey so far or future goals. Or, if you prefer, you can write a blog post and leave the link so we can take a look.
- Think about where you are on your blogging journey, what you’ve learned, and where you’d like to go.
- You might like to write down a short-term goal (what you’d like to work on next) and a long-term goal (what you’d like to work on eventually).
2. Try out one or more of the methods we’ve described above to share and market your blog. Maybe you’ll set up an email subscription, be an audience for someone else, try making visuals for your posts etc. Leave a comment to tell us about what you did. If you prefer, you can write a blog post and leave the link so we can take a look.
Personal Blogging Course Certificate
Have you completed each of the 10 steps in this course AND left a comment on each post? Maybe you’d like a certificate to show that you’ve completed the Personal Blogging Teacher Challenge course!
Fill out the form below to receive your certificate via email. Alternatively, click here to open the form in a new tab.
If you don’t receive your certificate, please look in your junk/spam folder.
Claim Your Badge!
If you’ve completed the Personal Blogging challenge, feel free to proudly display this badge on the sidebar of your blog. Alternatively, you might like to add it to your About page to demonstrate your professional learning.
Simply right click on the image and save it to your computer. Then add it to your sidebar by following these instructions.
We’re so happy to have you as part of our Teacher Challenge community!
I was required to create a blog for my grad class. I do like that you broke these steps down, and it made it less intimidating to create. I’d like to continue my blog after I finish my class because it’s a way for me to work with the material I am learning. I would also like to feature book reviews and book recommendations on my blog and by creating categories, I can do that and make it more accessible. I am a little intimidated to share my blog with others though. I do like that throughout this course, it talked about this being a journey and learning as you go. That’s the mindset I want to take as I create new posts.
Right now I am unsure how I want to share my blog. I am creating one as an assignment for a course, but might decide to go further with it in the future.
so proud of myself for completing this journey. I can now use this information to complete edit and create my own individual blog.
This was very dense. A lot of it was confusing. I will definitely do more later.
I am excited to see where I go with blogging. This is something very new to me. I have been working on my page, but it is still a work in progress. Thanks for all the great information, tools, videos, and links.
I have completed all 10 steps. Thanks for the information!
I have my blog started and I am ready to apply all the useful information that I learned. Thanks!
Glad I got my Blog set up with a step-by-step guide. Hoping to contribute more to my page and others in the future to build a community. Short term I’d like to use this blog as a sort of place for reflection but long term I’d like to see my page full of posts and discussions!
https://mvillagomez2.edublogs.org/
I am so, glad, I started this new blog and have a feel of what blogging is. Each time, I blog I become more comfortable and have the desire to continue to learn and post comments look forward to receiving my certificate and posting more blogs and reflections for my classes. Cheers to blogging!
This was enjoyable to use
I can honestly say i have never ever blogged in my life. I can see why people do it. Its very therapuetic. If its for educational reasons such as teacher to students and families it is a very cool way to communicate and reach out. I can also see this as a way to express feelings and docuament very cool and important details of a person’s life. I’m not sure if its for me but I can see how people like doing it. I will continue to do it for school reasons. Even though I am getting my undergrad i will like to make my blog more so for Parapro’s who are in school to get their degree in education and trying to balance their personal life, professional life and education.
At first, creating my blog was very difficult. I was very confused but Edublogs helped me through the process. If you follow all the steps provided, it will make your experience very simple and fun. I am glad I had the opportunity to work with Edublogs and learn how to make my own blog.
I have completed all 10 steps of my blog. This is the link to my blog.
https://rieska82.edublogs.org
Creating this blog was both exciting and challenging but I enjoyed the process. It definitely taught me new skills and broaden my creativity. I would definitely recommend it!
My blogging experience was kind of difficult. I was confused at first, but I believe practice makes perfect. I also believe that blogging is an excellent tool in which teachers all around the world can connect.
I’ve been fascinated with blogs since I was a young kid and saw Tumblr for the first time. I just love being able to express my feelings in a blog forum while also being able to see other people’s personal writing as well. This lesson taught me so much about how to enhance a blog with a variety of tools that benefits the writer and the reader. I will definitely continue to maintain a blog going forward!
The link to my blog is:
https://etalis.edublogs.org/
I decided to market my blog and promote it on my Twitter account. I also made a post about my next steps: https://malakhamed.edublogs.org/2022/11/28/my-next-steps/
I enjoyed the 10-step blog challenge!
My blogging journey started off rocky. I was confused at first but then I began reading the steps carefully and step by step. After a while it got easier. Now I feel more tech savy and I wouldn’t mind creating another blog in the future.
I have completed all 10 steps of my blog. Although it was pretty difficult and time consuming, it was great experience for me.
Take a look at my completed blog here:
https://shareenkhalifa.edublogs.org
I wrote in my blog about how much I have learned about blogs and how I would want to use blogs in the future when I become a teacher. A long-term goal of mine would be to create a different blog about my personal life and hobbies!
Blog: https://haneeny123.edublogs.org
Haneen Yousef hyousef3@student.govst.edu
https://jennifernesparza47.edublogs.org/2022/11/16/my-journey-with-blogs-as-a-beginner/
https://arwazorba.edublogs.org/
Starting out my blogging journey, it was confusing and somewhat difficult. But with that being said, as time went on, I was glad that I didn’t give up. I have truly enjoyed my experience. This was a fun way to show my creative writing skills on a topic that I have enjoyed talking about.
Setting up the blog was a bit difficult in the beginning, however, once I got used to it it was great! I learned a lot and I now have a creative outlet. I learned so much that I couldn’t have thought of on my own. I want to keep up on this to track my educational journey.
New view on blogging
https://kwalker8.edublogs.org/2022/11/04/blogging-journey/
So far blogging is a little difficult but I am getting the hang of it. I think that with more practice I will get better at blogging.
This is an important piece to the puzzle of blogging, Edublog has given me a tool to develop and market my thoughts, ideas, and sharing of information. Thank you.
I think blogging is something I can get use to
I had fun setting up this blog. It was fun because I was able be creative and use my imagination. Due to my unfamiliarity with the website, some activities were challenging for me.
I enjoyed doing this blog, even though it was hard to do so!
this is the link to my blog
https://hindabdulla1.edublogs.org/
Creating a blog for me was quite difficult since I am not very tech savvy. Edublog made it an easier process for me though and I did enjoy getting to explore a little more with the technology. It was a fun time creating this blog!