Do You Want to Build a Social Media Presence?
As a beginner blogger, there’s nothing more frustrating than slow blog growth. Even if you’ve been at it for months – spending countless hours creating content and improving your site – the growth you see may be minimal at best.
Fortunately, there are plenty of methods you can use to grow your blog, such as build a social media presence. Doing so can offer many benefits, including helping you to engage with readers, promote brand awareness, and drive traffic to your blog.
With the above in mind, in this post we’ll reveal four ways you can build your social media presence for massive blog growth. Let's get started!
1. Choose Your Social Media Platforms Carefully
You may believe that the more social media platforms you’re on, the better. However, choosing to focus on just one or two means you won't have to spread yourself too thin. You'll have more time to refine your strategies and engage with followers.
When you’re looking to grow blog traffic, you want to go where your target audience is. That’s why it’s important to do your research and choose your platforms carefully.
When you're making your decision, there are two major things to keep in mind:
- Know your audience. Once you identify your target audience's demographics, you can find out where they’re more likely to spend their time online.
- Know your content. Make sure your content fits the platform in terms of form and tone. For example, Instagram is very visual, so videos and images work well. If on the other hand your blog has a professional tone, LinkedIn might be a good choice.
With your carefully chosen platforms set up, you’re probably eager to get started. Not so fast – you first need to create a solid social media plan.
2. Create a Plan of Attack
Before really digging in, it’s best to create a clear list of goals and objectives, as well as a plan for achieving them.
The goals you set and the plan you create will depend on what you want and expect for your blog. However, there are a few general goals and objectives that every blogger can get behind. For example:
- The number of followers you’d like to reach.
- The volume of traffic you’d like to drive to your site.
- The number of leads you’d like to convert.
Setting goals is an important mental activity that can set you up for success down the road. Here are a few tips to get you started on your plan of attack:
- Incorporate blog goals with social media goals. When your goals are closely aligned, they're much easier to track and manage.
- Break large goals into small steps. Goals can be overwhelming, but when you break them down into smaller steps, they become easier to manage and achieve.
- Be specific and clear. Set goals that are clearly defined and specific in nature. For example, “Gain 500 Instagram followers in 90 days”.
- Use an editorial calendar. Once you have your goals set, it's time to create a schedule for your blog and social media posts – and stick to it. With an editorial calendar, you can incorporate your goals into your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. This will keep you on track.
With solid goals and a clear plan of action, now it’s time to get into the most important aspect of social media – engagement.
3. Boost Follower Engagement
Your followers are your greatest asset, so it’s important to engage with them as much as possible.
This means creating a presence while also inspiring and encouraging conversations. This puts you in direct contact with your audience and keeps you in the loop.
Here are three simple tips to get you started right now:
- Share unique content that your followers care about. Show your followers that you know all about them – this means sharing content that you know they’ll love!
- Get involved in the conversation. You want to be an active presence on your followers’ feeds. This means using social media tools (like Facebook Live) and interaction techniques (such as hosted Twitter chats) to engage and ignite conversation.
- Encourage interaction. Calls-to-action aren’t just a blogging technique; they can be used anywhere you create content, including social media. Use this technique to encourage interaction by asking questions, requesting feedback, or encouraging an action (such as a ‘retweet’ or ‘share’).
Engagement is the one social media technique that is sure to pay off. That’s why it’s the aspect of your social media strategy you should be spending the most time on.
4. Optimize Your Social Media Accounts
Keywords aren’t just for your blog or website – they can also be a great way to gain more exposure on social media platforms.
Think of social media profile optimization the same way you think of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Simply put, you want to make it easier for your ideal audience to find you.
Fortunately, optimizing your social media accounts is pretty straightforward:
- Know your platforms. Understanding how information is displayed on your profile will enable you to make changes that your target readers will actually notice.
- Add an image. A friendly, on-brand image can help to personalize your profile and make users more likely to follow or subscribe.
- Add links. You can link out to your homepage, your most recent post, your newly-launched e-book, or even other social media profiles.
- Use niche keywords. Add them directly to your profile, create content that incorporates them, and use hashtags or related techniques for added impact.
While this aspect of your social media strategy doesn't need to take up a lot of time, it’s one that will probably net you a large number of targeted followers.
Conclusion
Social media can be seriously powerful when it comes to extending your reach and growing your blog. Even if you’re just getting started, there are a number of things you can do to build and improve your social media presence.
In this post, we showed you four ways to build a social media presence. Let's recap them quickly:
- Choose your social media platforms carefully.
- Create a plan of attack.
- Boost follower engagement.
- Optimize your social media accounts.
Do you have any questions about how to build a social media presence and getting started? Let us know in the comments section below!
What's Next?
Social media is an important part of having a successful blog. However, having social media channels without a blog is useless. Join our FREE 30 Day Blog Challenge today and we will give you a simple blogging task daily. At the end of 30 days you will be well on your way to a successful blog and getting those social media platforms up and running.
Image credit: Pexels.
Anthony Little says
Great information, there are a lot great tips I do agree that planning and scheduling work will help getting thing done. It was interesting reading about how to optimize social media account I will be using this more. Thanks for sharing this article.