Ask any blogger, and they will tell you the difference between a successful blog and one which only your best friend reads is how you promote yourself via social media. While there is a vast difference between influencers and bloggers, cultivating engaging social media channels as a blogger is vital to get the word out about your blog and the most amazing piece you have just published.
This is an art form and something many bloggers spend a lot of time and effort on cultivating. Creating a solid social media presence as a blogger isn’t easy and requires patience, tenacity and hard work. Along with some excellent interpersonal skills, good content and a dash of likeability.
Whether you are a seasoned blogger or new to the game, knowing exactly how to create the ultimate social media accounts to support your blog. After all, how else will anyone know what you have written!
Make Your Blog Posts Shareable
You want people to be able to read what you are writing and if they enjoy it, share it with others they know will enjoy it too. Be it “ten ways to clean your house quickly as a parent” or “how not to embarrass yourself at the school gates” humour type posts, make it shareable.
Add social media buttons to your blog to point people in the direction of your social media accounts and underneath your posts, add sharing buttons so people can share to their social media accounts at the click of a button.
If you have a WordPress blog, this is easy to do via installing plugins. Alternatively, check out your current platform for options to add to your posts to make them as social as possible.
Define Your Audience
Followers are good; the more, the merrier, right? Not quite. Inactive or dead followers can drag down your engagement rates. And while many bloggers find themselves amassing followers via different means, not every follower is beneficial to you.
It is a numbers game but more and more brands are looking for bloggers who can prove an engaged following and elicit responses from their followers frequently.
Defining your audience means taking stock of the type of person you want to read your posts or who they are aimed at or who will find this information helpful and relevant. Then you need to find your ideal followers on social media by sharing content they find appealing.
Not sure what content to share? Look at others in your niche and find out what they are sharing and what gets the most interaction. Then use this information to create content relevant to your blog.
Video Is King
How many videos do you watch or get sent a day? Chances are you spend more time these days watching video content via social media, especially if you are on Tik Tok. Video content is highly relevant and shareable and is a great way to introduce you and your blog to people by allowing them to get to know you more.
Invest in some high-quality video editing equipment or work with a video production company to help you create shareable content representing who you are and what your blog and social media accounts are about.
Remember to keep it short and snappy to keep people’s attention, practise on IG stories and create reels to break up your feed, go live on Facebook and keep your longer, more informative content for Youtube where people prefer to watch longer-form content. It can even be worth looking at video tools that turn your blog posts into videos using text and images to help you engage more people when sharing your latest posts on social media.
Be Yourself
This point cannot be stressed enough. There is a lot of competition out there these days, especially with the rise of the social media influencer. Avoid falling into the trap of pushing what you think people want to see and building a profile around an image that isn’t healthy, sustainable or even attainable.
Social media is known for being fake at times, and your followers will want to see the real you as a person they can relate to. Be that person. Show who you are and what you care about. Honesty will go a long way into building a loyal following and readership who tune in to find out what you are doing each day. Plus, it is easier to share content relevant to you than having to “make something up” to please your audience.
Automate Social Sharing
This is the easiest way to ensure your social media accounts are kept up to date and active.
For WordPress blogs, you can use an automated sharing option via the Jetpack plugin. Free accounts on-site such as Buffer can allow you to fill up limited posts before moving to a paid plan. Utilise analytics from your scheduler to determine when your followers are mostly online and when you are more likely to receive engagement. This can be found on most platforms, and the facebook content creator site can give you access to insights to help you create the best schedule for you. You can also schedule posts via Facebook for free too.
Create New Titles For Blog Posts
When sharing your content, it can be helpful to mix up the titles when you share the post. This can make it seem like you share different content, especially if you have it set up to share frequently.
For example, if your post is called 10 Ways To Get Your Baby To Sleep, you can alternate through titles such as;
- Won’t Baby Sleep? Try These Tips
- Can’t Sleep or Won’t Sleep? These Tips Will Get Your Baby To Sleep Quickly
- Tried and Tested Tricks That Are Guaranteed to Work
Identify Relevant Hashtags
Hashtags, as everyone knows, are ideal for both Twitter and Instagram. Instead of going in blind and making anything up, research the relevant hashtags for your posts to get maximum engagement. Create lists of different hashtags for Instagram depending on the content you are publishing and aim to have around 11 when starting and when you have built up the excellent engagement; you can reduce this down. It is also worth noting that it is preferable to publish your hashtags in the caption, not the comments, as it was once thought better to do.
For Twitter, use what is relevant to your tweet and can be fitted in the character limit. To increase engagement or to give you conversation topics, check out the top trending hashtags and engage with others using them too. This approach works well on Instagram, and the more you engage with others using the hashtags, the more visible your posts will become.
When it comes to distributing your blog content on social media, it can be a lot of trial and error but ultimately getting it right can be an art form. There isn’t a “proper” way to go about it. People have found success in sharing blog information in their own unique ways, according to their own preferences. Some people will just post links to their blogs on social media. Others will share a significant proportion of original content on social media platforms.
Learn to know when you are online enough or too much. While you need to be visible, you don’t want to be that person who lives their life through social media. That in itself can be off-putting.
As is the case with most things in life, the best approach is sometimes found somewhere in the middle. If you follow the tactics outlined in this piece, you should be able to generate a steady stream of visitors from social media to your blog, and you will learn how to tailor the plan to your blog over time.
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*This is a collaborative post