How to use Blogs as the Marketing channel in the Graphy platform?

This article guides you through the step-by-step process of creating new blog posts within the Graphy Platform.

Once you have created your course, the next step is to market it. In the Graphy platform itself, there are several in-built marketing features. This article takes into account the first channel "Blog".

The blog is a user engagement tool through which you can organically grow your website traffic. This is one of the best ways to stay engaged with your existing as well as potential learners. 

Using Blog as a Marketing Channel

Visit your Dashboard, scroll down and select "Marketing". Here, you can view all the available features. Now, head over to the "Blogs" to explore it in detail.

Under "Blogs" you can create new blogs as well as view & edit all the details of your existing blogs posted in one place. 

Creating a new Blog

Click on the "New Blog" button to add a new blog. Now, fill in the details as explained below.

Title: The name under which the blog is published. The blog title should precisely state what the blog is about.
Example: Use "Three laws of Newton" as the title if you are going to explain Newton's three laws in your Blog.

URL: The web address under which the blog is published.
Example: www(your blog title).com

Author: The name of the person who has written the Blog.
Example: Give credit to "Ron" if he has written the blog content.

Category: The whole blog is sub-divided into several categories. Choose the category of individual blogs.
Example: If you post a blog is about Social Media Marketing, you can have categories like Instagram or Facebook. Choose the one which is closely related to your blog post. 

SEO Title: This is the SEO-optimized title of the web page.
Example: Use titles like "5 steps to crack CAT exam in 2 months" if you are going to talk about how someone can prepare for CAT with barely 2 months in hand.

SEO Keywords: The keywords using which the search engines will find the blog.
Example: Use keywords which people are most likely to type & search. Like "How to approach logical reasoning questions". 

SEO Description: This is a snippet of a maximum of 155 characters which summarizes the blog's content. Try to use at least one SEO keyword to make the most out of this option.  
Example: If your blog is about introducing your Online Institute, you can write a description like "Your Institute: Learn Quants, DI LR & VA RC  in a simple, fun & creative way to crack CAT and get calls from top MBA colleges"

Publish Date: Select the date which you want to appear as the published date. You can choose a backdate, current date, and even dates in advance. In order to choose Created Date as the published date, you can keep the column blank.

After filling in the above information, click on "Submit" to save the changes.

Customize Blog

After creating a new blog, you can customize its look & feel by using the Blog Editor. Go to the blog you want to customize & click on the "Edit" option below "Customise".

In a new tab, the blog editor will open. A blog editor functions similarly to the website builder. Refer to this guide to understand it in detail.

Add Featured Image to the Blog

This is the post thumbnail or the representative image of the Blog.
Please note that a blog with a thumbnail gets a better response than the one without it. Hence, we recommend you to do it before moving into the next step.

Go to the blog you want to add featured image to, click on the "Featured Image" icon under "Actions". On the landing page just select the image from your computer and upload it.  

Edit Blog

Once you have entered all the information of the "New Blog" a new entry gets created. The next step is to add content to the blog before publishing it. Go to the Blog you want to publish and click on "Edit" under "Actions"

In the landing page, you will find all the blog information pre-filled which you filled in while creating New Blog in the previous step. However, these are editable so you can edit them here as well. 

Add Blog Content

In the same tab, scroll down and go to the last option "Add Content Here".
Here, you have to add the content for your Blog.
This is an HTML text editor. Hence, you can add textual content along with visuals.   

After adding the content, click on "Save". Now, if you want the blog to be published on your platform, hit "Publish".
Please note that you can always come back here and make changes even after it's published.   

Preview the Blog

Before publishing the blog, you can take a look at how it's going to appear on your website once published.  

Go to the blog you want to preview, click on "Preview" under "Actions". The landing page will show the preview of that blog post. 

Delete the Blog

Whether published or unpublished, you can delete any of the blogs that you have created by using the delete icon.

Go to the blog that you want to delete, click on the "Delete" icon under "Actions". A new question will pop up asking "Do you really want to delete this Blog?". Select "Ok" & the blog will be deleted. 

Search your Blog

You can apply multiple search filters or directly search for the blog you are looking for.
This section proves to be of the utmost importance especially when the no. of items is high.
Click on "Add Filters", select the filters as per your requirement then click on "Search".

Example: If you are looking for a blog which was uploaded recently, you can scroll through all the pages to find it. But, that seems to be a time-consuming task, especially when there are multiple pages. Therefore, you can apply the "created date" as well as the "author" filter. Blog listing will be narrowed down and you will be able to identify the blog immediately. 

Blog Comments

You can integrate either Facebook or Disqus on your platform as your third-party blog comment hosting service. 

Integrate Disqus
Click on "choose plugin", select "Disqus". Add "Disqus Forum Name" and click on "Save".

Integrate Facebook
Click on "choose plugin", select "Facebook". Add "Facebook App Id" and click on "Save".  

Blog Home Custom Scripts/ Tags

The custom scripts that you add here will go to all the blog posts on your course platform's blog section.

Individual Blog Custom Scripts/ Tags

The individual blog custom script will go to the particular blog for which you would fill in the individual custom script.

Publish the Blog
Click on the "publish" icon under Actions to publish the blog. Once you click on the icon, your blog will be automatically published.