Promote Your Blog on Social Media the Easy Way

Your blog is up and running the right way and may even be getting found in search engines. But it’s still not getting the hits you want and nobody is commenting on your posts.

What are you going to do?????

Social media to the rescue!

Among all the ways to promote your blog, social media is the number one method. It’s free and immediate and has infinite interactive possibilities. Additionally, the shares and commenting contributed by social media actually increase your ranking with Google, making it an even more worthwhile endeavour.

But to promote your blog on social media takes time and energy, and having a plan is essential. Be prepared to spend a lot of time in the beginning, and devote shorter, regular spurts along the way. Here’s how to get started:

Create Accounts and Followings

Focus on the top social media outlets and open accounts with them.

Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr are the highest trafficked sites, though they are not the end-all.

Create accounts using your name, your companies name, or an intuitive nickname that people will remember. Complete your profile for each account using relevant keywords and a good headshot. Give them all they information you feel comfortable offering, but whenever asked, withhold your birth year for security reasons.

Next, allow the service to dig into your hard drive and find your friends who have accounts so that it can hook you up automatically. I know that sounds creepy at first, but once you surrender your contacts, your social life opens up exponentially

twitter followersGet followers by becoming a follower. Start with an influencer in your industry and follow them. Then, click on who they follow and follow those people. Then, dive in.

Be Social

Apart from when you promote your blog on social media – which I’ll elaborate in the next part – start posting other things appropriate to each site. 

Remember, social media is not all about your blog. In fact no more than 20% of your social posts should be about you. Among the stuff about you, less than half should be outright sales pitches. Your blog posts, however, are considered soft sell as long as they are informational.

google+ page, blogsitestudio.com

Sharing stuff allows your new followers to get to know you and possibly re-share your curated posts. If you use appropriate #hashtags that people are following, you can gain a wider reach and attract more followers.

If you’re not sure what to post on each network, here’s a cheatsheet:

  • Facebook – relevant content, pictures, quizzes, quotes
  • Linkedin – business related contact
  • Twitter – content links, breaking news, twit pics
  • Pinterest – tall images of food porn, recipes, fashion, DIY
  • Instagram – pictures of anything

What and when to post on social media is a whole science. To read more about it, see:

20 Social Media Tips To Rule In 2014 

THE SOCIAL MEDIA FREQUENCY GUIDE: HOW OFTEN TO POST TO FACEBOOK, TWITTER, LINKEDIN, AND MORE 

Automate Social Media Posts

Yes, logging into each social media site and pasting links and clever text into each one is exhausting and time consuming. This was discovered almost as soon as social media became a thing. That’s when the word “automate” became a call to action.

To be effective, you need to automate your social media, at least to some extent. That’s why social media tools were invented. Here’s what I use:

Buffer – the free version allows me to set up Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Linkedin accounts related to my Blogsite Studio business. When I find a story to post, I click the Buffer icon, pick the social service, comment, and schedule the post, and it gets posted when I want it to. 

I spend an hour each morning setting up posts for the day. One each goes to Linkedin, Google+ and Facebook, and 8-10 go to Twitter. 

tweetdeck page, blogsitestudio.com

Tweetdeck – I manage three Twitter accounts and the free version of Tweetdeck allows me to see all of their activity, plus a few hashtags I follow, across 16 columns. 

I use Tweetdeck’s easy scheduler to retweet other people tweets as well as scheduling tweets for the middle of the night. People in Europe and Asia retweet and follow while I’m sleeping.

But there are many more tools to promote your blog on social media. You’ll find more among the Top 100+ Content Marketing Tools.

Automate Social Posts in WordPress

Once you’ve built a following using the above tools and methods, you are almost ready to promote your blog on social media. 

I’ve tried a lot of plugins to automate my posts on social media, but the one that works easiest is JetPack Publicize, available when you are connected to JetPack with your WordPress.com account. 

JetPack Publicize is actually two plugins in one: Publicize and Sharing.

publicize, blogsitestudio.com

Publicize for sending your posts to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Tumblr and Path (What’s Path? ).

sharing buttons, blogsitestudio.comSharing for allowing readers to share the posts on your site to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, and StumbleUpon as well as email, print and Pocket (What’s Pocket?).

After connecting with your social accounts, Publicize places a module in the Publish section on the Edit Page.

publicize box, blogsitestudio.com

You can click on the Edit box to edit the social message. A link shortcode is pre-set.

So when your post is launched, all of the social sites you are connected to will post a link to your blog. Presto-Sharo!

Promote your Blog on Social Media

Consider this a brief introduction in how to promote your blog on social media. There are a million ways to finesse social media, and it just takes practice and testing to find what works best for your blog. The best thing you can do is get busy now.

Got a favourite tip for using social media? Please share it with us. Here, or on social media.

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