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Make Your Blog The Best With These Social Media Tips
One of the points we can't stress enough at 30 Day Blog Challenge is that once you publish your piece, you are not done. You need to take these social media tips into consideration before you start your blog. It takes a bit of time and organization to get your articles seen and heard. Make sure you are ready to commit your time to these tasks.
Why is it important to take social media seriously?
Blogging is very dependent on timing; when to post so the most people see your blog, when to post so the content is relevant / interesting and how to promote the post on social media to reach a wider audience.
Social Media is a relatively new tool in both social and professional circles. Although it may seem counter intuitive to increase your social channels in order to boost your professional life, it's exactly how you'll get the most online views.
Here are the most important social media tips you need to know to make your blog a success. Take note of these tips and watch your blogs get double the views and shares.
Prep Your Blog for Social Media
Identify Your Social Media Platforms
The most common and useful social media tools are generally Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Some bloggers find it beneficial to promote themselves on only one or two sites while others use several.
Identify your target audience : Experiment with the social media platforms that work best for your audience. If your target audience geared toward professionals and businesses, LinkedIn might be more useful to you. If your target audience is visual, Instagram or Pinterest would be better. Facebook and Twitter are fairly universal and can benefit all audiences.
Include Social Sharing Buttons
Social sharing buttons that show how many times your article has been shared, as well as make it easy for readers to share. This is an important part of growing social media buzz around your article. If sharing the article is easy, it is more likely to be shared.
It is also important to limit social sharing buttons to 3, as research shows more than 3 buttons actually result in fewer shares. Having a lot of buttons also slows the loading speed of your site. Since research shows that readers will wait no longer than 3 seconds for a site to load, this is particularly important.
Notice below how the article screenshot shows exactly how many likes the article has received in total. Certainly a sexy addition to a successful page.
Use Tools to Automate and Manage Social Media
Sites like Buffer, Hootsuite and WordPress Sharing allow you to set up and publish posts while you sleep, across international time zones. You can publish multiple posts at once and even publish the same post on many social media sites.
These management platforms allow you to stay organized in your posts, reviewing past posts and noticing patterns that form.
Promote Your Blog Post
Get On Facebook
Share your post to relevant Facebook groups. Become a member and active participant in Facebook groups that are significant to your subject. As people in the group get to know and trust you, they will be more likely to read and share your posts.
Message connections and ask them to share your blog. These connections could be professional, personal or a mix of both. Share it with anyone you think will give you exposure.
It is particularly important to get a lot of likes the first few minutes you post something. Facebook recognizes this and pushes your post to the top of it's feed. Ask your friends or professional connections to like your post as soon as you publish it to increase the visibility of it.
Hack Twitter
Using Twitter's search function, you can view tweets that contain similar content as you. Pull out the most influential people, those with more than 500 followers that are talking about and sharing similar content. Reply to those people's tweets, opening a conversation and creating connections on these social media platforms.
You can also direct message these connections, asking them to share your content once you've learned more about them and their content.
Utilize Google+
Google+ is an interest based social media platform run by Google itself. Google+ is an important tool for bloggers to increase your visibility and SEO rank. Learning to use Google+ is significant for “the opportunity to interact and engage with industry professionals in a comparatively quiet and efficient location (convinceandconvert.com)”.
Google+ allows you to get on the radar of high level professionals in the industry such as Mari Smith and Brian Stolis. Most professionals at this level don't have the time and opportunity to answer every tweet or direct message but Google+ bridges that gap and is a good platform for interacting with these people.
Bonus Hack:
• Share snippets of your blog. You can share quotes or short sections of your blog throughout the day or week to encourage people to read the full article. Use social media management tools, as this can get time consuming without them.
Twitter is a great place to share snippets since it only allows the sharing of 150 characters at a time anyway.
Blend Your Personal and Professional Life on Social Media
To a certain degree, sharing both personal pictures of travel, humorous memes or a picture of you doing something you enjoy, helps the reader connect with you as the writer. The reader will get a look inside your personal life and feel less disconnected from you as the author.
Adding a profile picture or thumbnail picture also helps, by putting a face to the name behind the author.
Your private life in generally more interesting than your professional life; keep your reader interested by giving them a glimpse as the “off-duty” you. Are you an SEO specialist that also runs iron mans? Do you free dive all around the world when you're not blogging about social media? Whatever it is, you will be more memorable if you include personal details.
Ten More Quick Social Media Tips
1. Use square images when sharing an article for up to 53% more likes and 104% more comments (Strong Social Media)
2. Celebrate milestones with your readers/subscribers (10,000 likes! 2 years!)
3. Use SocialBro to determine the ideal times to tweet each day based on who you follow and when they are active
4. Connect your social media platforms for cross-platform engagement; Twitter and Facebook to LinkedIn, for example
5. Let someone know when you have linked their profile or article in your blog to increase your network
6. Create a editorial calendar for content for up to 30 days out; use social media management tools to schedule your calendar to ensure consistent posting
7. For Google+ posts, think longer than Facebook posts or tweets at over 400 characters
8. Reply to an account when they share your post, further creating professional connections
9. Type a period before tweeting at someone, otherwise it will not be published to your stream and seen by followers (for example: .@30dayblogchallenge)
10. Create a contest or competition to encourage interactive viewers and more shares
When it comes to a successful blog, social media is one of the most important ways to gain visibility. Social media networks have grown from a part of personal, private lives into all networks of professional businesses as well. Utilizing these social media tips is the best way to gain views, shares and profit for your website.
What's Next?
To learn more about the ins and outs of blogging and social media, you can always take the 30 Day Blog Challenge. Sign up now and in just one month you will have your blog up and running.
We would also love to hear some of your best social media tips and tricks? Feel free to comment below 🙂
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