National Health Blog Post Month, Day 4: What happens after you press “publish.” Write about your post-blog-writing process. Do you immediately tweet a link? Email it to everyone? Re-read it for spelling errors?
I have to admit, at first I thought this blog prompt sounded…well, how do I say…a certain, I don’t know…boring.
After I thought about it for awhile, and also talked it out with A-Flizzle, I realized that this is actually pretty important, and something I would have liked to have read when I first started blogging. So for all the new bloggers on the block, here is your crash course in post publishing.
I’m obsessive about proofreading, so it isn’t uncommon for me to read a blog post several times over to make sure it includes all of the things that I want it to say. I also like to make sure it has a certain flow and rhythm to it. In other words, I like to make sure that it makes sense.
Once I am satisfied and hit Publish, I head over to bit.ly and shorten my blog URL. I like bit.ly because not only does it count the number of times someone accesses my blog post via the shortened URL, but it also gives me more characters to take liberty with when I tweet my post. This is especially useful when my blog title doesn’t make a lot of sense at first glance and needs a bit of explanation, such as Amazeballs or Unconscionable Numeracy.
Then I tweet the title and a link to my post, and throw in a few hashtags for good measure. Since my blog is mostly all about diabetes, I frequently use #dblog and #diabetes as my hashtags of choice. For this month, since it is National Health Blog Post Month, I’m using #NHBPM as well. I also open up Facebook and share the URL to my blog post there. (Did you know Diabetically Speaking has a Facebook fan page? It’s true!) I like to put my blog post link everywhere I possibly can so that no matter what vehicle people are most comfortable with using, they can find it.
Once I’m done posting it everywhere, I go back and read the post again. As I mentioned earlier, I have a problem with proofreading.
As my day goes on, I’m almost always multitasking and doing other things besides my blog (read: I’m working). Occasionally (read: every 5 minutes) I’ll open up TweetDeck or Facebook to see if anyone has re-tweeted or shared the link to my post. I am grateful for every single person that feels compelled to share my post with their circle of friends and followers, and I try to make sure I say thank you when I can. It’s just the polite thing to do, in my opinion.
I also keep an eye out to see if anybody is leaving comments. Blog comments are gifts, and I appreciate every single one of them. Except the spambot comments. I have a special place for those, and a special feeling for the programmers that created them.
By the end of the day, hopefully my blog post has gone viral, or has at least been read by one more person than just me. So far the closest I’ve come to going viral has been more of a muffled sneeze, really.
What makes it all worthwhile to me is when I hear from a reader that I have helped in some way, who understands diabetes better, or who is grateful that I put into words what they are going through.
I would gladly go through this process 100 times to help that 1.
This post was written as part of National Health Blog Post Month (NHBPM) – 30 health posts in 30 days: http://bit.ly/vU0g9J
Diabetically Speaking 
I like to *think* I’m obsessive about proofreading…but I end up editing anyways after “publish”.
Please contact me regarding an opportu…oh wait, just kidding! 🙂 – Totally agree with you about spammy comments. I hate the letdown you feel when you find out a comment wasn’t really a valid one.
I had the same thoughts about this prompt, but I too found it interesting to consider in the end. Great job, Martin.
i too, am a compulsive proof reader! it can be a bit of a problem though. i find spelling errors and grammatical mistakes in newspapers and novels. perhaps there is a new line of work for me?
A fellow compulsioner…uh, compulsionist? Whatever, my blog post today has bits of what you said. It makes me feel better to know that I’m not the only one who does these things. Maybe this prompt wasn’t so bad after all.
I think I need to work on sharing my blog posts. I don’t have a Twitter account but I could do a better job of getting my word out there. Thanks for a great post!
Another great post for #NHBPM, thanks for sharing!
Here’s a little present/comment for you. I, too, obsess over every little thing, but somehow I always find a mistake after posting.
ahahha muffled sneeze. that reminds me of the old paula poundstone joke about that billboard that said “the wages of sin are death”, to which she added “but once taxes are taken out, it’s really more of a tired feeling”.