How I publish website blog posts directly from my ConvertKit emails
Step 1: The blog post images
The first thing I do when I come up with my blog post idea is create the images that will accompany the post. I do this using Canva.
I have a template that doesn’t change, apart from the title, so I only need to type in the title and download the new images. I create 2 images for each post; one that’s 1920px x 1080px (i.e. the image you can see above) which is used as the feature image on my website, and a square image (1200px x 1200px) that is used as the feature image on my Creator Profile (I’ll explain what that is in a moment).
Here are the 2 images for this blog post;
Step 2: Type the email using ConvertKit’s email editor
This is getting meta because as I type this, this is what I’m actually doing – creating the email that will become the blog post!
I am conscious of making the blog post skimmable for my readers by using text decoration, like different headers, bold, italics, and white space to give the eyes room to breathe.
The ConvertKit editor is super-simple to use and offers a list of elements that can be added to any email – the image below shows a few examples;
Step 3: Publish the email to the web
Once I’m happy that my email content (i.e. my blog post) is complete, I publish it to the web using my Creator Profile on ConvertKit. To do this, simply click the ‘Continue‘ button in the ConvertKit editor and you’ll be presented with this form;
Click the ‘Publish to web‘ option to be taken to this screen;
In this form, I upload the square image that I created earlier as this renders better in the Creator Profile (I haven’t forgotten, I’ll explain more about the Creator Profile!).
It’s good practice, for accessibility reasons, to add some alt text for your image, and if you want to, you can also keep your blog posts behind a paywall by making it only visible to paying subscribers (I don’t do this, but it’s an option to be used).
The, click ‘Continue‘ to be taken to this screen;
Now, click the ‘Publish Broadcast‘ button to make your email ‘public’ and you’ll receive this pop-up message;
Congratulations! You just created your first public email, which is visible on your Creator Profile and website!
My Creator Profile
If you’re not yet using ConvertKit, or perhaps you are but not leveraging its Creator Profile feature, then here’s a brief overview.
Essentially, it’s a public digital resource, more or less a mini-website, that contains certain digital assets (you get to choose what it contains).
Below is a screenshot of what mine currently looks like, including menu items across the top of the screen;
You can have up to 7 web pages hosted by ConvertKit on your Creator Profile, these include the following;
- Posts: these are the emails that I’m creating right now – the public ones.
- Links: these are any digital links you wish to include for your audience (e.g. your social media profile links, your website, your newsletters etc.)
- Products: these are products and services that you wish to sell via ConvertKit’s Commerce feature (available on free and premium plans).
- Recommendations: these are people who recommend me to their audience and people whom I recommend to my audience.
- Custom pages: you can have up to 3 additional custom web pages hosted on your Creator Profile; as you can see on my profile, I have created pages entitled; ‘Free stuff‘, ‘Work with me‘, and ‘About‘, however, these can be anything you wish.
Every time I create an email and make it ‘public’, it appears as a ‘post’ on my Creator Profile – the image above doesn’t show it because I’m still typing, but by the time you read this post, you’ll be able to see this post shown on there too.
Appears as a website blog post (automatically)
Okay, now to the super-cool part! I created a simple email and it automatically appears as a blog post on my website a few minutes after I publish it!
Now, there’s no actual ‘magic’ happening, it’s all down to what I did a few years ago – I installed the ConvertKit WordPress plugin.
It’s not a technical thing to do so don’t give yourself the ‘it’s a techy thing’ excuse not to do it – it’s literally a click-along process that anyone can do!
I won’t show you how to do it in this post, but instead, refer you to this other article I created (using the same method!) so you can set yours up the same way;
In this article, I show you how to download, install, activate, and use ConvertKit’s free WordPress plugin.
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Okay, so with your WordPress plugin installed, you’ll now have access to ‘Settings‘;
You’ll notice the first section above, entitled ‘Enable Automatic import‘ – this is the key setting which configures the plugin to monitor your ‘public’ emails and when one is detected, import it into WordPress, transform it into a blog ‘post’ and publish it.
And that’s it – that’s all you need to do. Now when I create this post you’re reading now and publish it, it’ll appear on my website, just like the ones below have done;
Post-publishing SEO
I recommend that after you publish your blog post, you check its ranking with an SEO tool. The one I use is called ‘Rank Math’ (it’s free) and it gives you an interface where you can add keywords for your blog post making it more likely to be found when people search for that topic in Google.
A score of over 80 in Rank Math for your post is deemed to be good, so spend 10-15 mins with each post to optimise your chances of it being indexed and served up by Google as a good resource for searchers.
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An example of one of my posts being ranked by the Rank Math WordPress plugin |
⚡️ Summary
Creating blog posts doesn’t have to feel like a chore. Simply by typing up an email (just like I’m doing now), you can easily craft a compelling and helpful resource for your audience, one that will eventually be found by Google when people search for an answer to a question that you cover in your content.
The steps:
- Create your accompanying images
- Write the email in ConvertKit
- Publish the email (make it public)
- Fine-tune the SEO ranking in Rank Math
That’s it – once it’s set up, each post becomes a sub-60-minute task (provided you already have the required info for your post!)
Give it a go and if you get stuck, give me a shout!
Good luck!
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John Bellingham
Email marketing strategist for aspirational small business owners.
If we haven’t already done so, let’s connect on LinkedIn.
The Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing gives you everything you need to know to design, launch, and run an effective email marketing system in your business.
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