10 Social Media Marketing Tips for Your Blog

Social Media is one of the most effective ways to promote your blog. Bloggers across the world use social media to drive traffic, enhance their profile and reputation and connect with audiences.

Organic search engine ranking takes time to achieve. Social media on the other hand can be equally effective in the short term. Today, social media has become an integral part of blog marketing strategy.

Here are 10 Social Media tips for bloggers:

1. Use Multiple Social Networks

Use a number of social media sites for maximum exposure. There are dozens of high ranking social sites in addition to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Social news and bookmarking websites such as Digg and as Stumble Upon in particular can often drive more traffic to your blog than leading sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

2. Make it Easy for Blog Visitors to Connect with You

Make it easy for readers to share your posts or follow you on social media. Include share buttons on each post. Display your social media profiles in a prominent place on your website, preferably above the fold.

3. Give Special Focus to Your Main Profiles

Although it is good to use various social media sites and give users a wider choice to connect with you, it is also important to give special focus to the networks that work best for you. E.g. including individual ReTweet, Facebook or Stumble Upon buttons below the post title in addition to common sharing options or displaying latest tweets is common.

Plug-ins such as Tweet box (see image below) that enables readers to tweet without leaving your blog are other ways to encourage participation.

4. Create a Dedicated Facebook Page For Your Blog

Your blog should have its own dedicated fan page on Facebook even if you have a page for your business. You can integrate your blog’s feed. You can also include a Facebook like box on your blog or use Facebook social plugin for WordPress.

5. Integrate Your RSS Feed on Your Social Profiles

Many social sites offer the ability to integrate your RSS feed to automatically display new posts from your blog on your social profile. You can do this on LinkedIn using the Blog Link application and on Facebook using one of the many RSS apps. On Twitter, you can do this via third party tools such as TwitterFeed. Alternatively, you can use a single tool such as Ping.fm or HootSuite to post new posts from your feed to multiple social media sites automatically.

6. Cross Promote Your Social Media Profiles

Cross promote your social profiles to increase followers. There are many ways to do this. See example of Twilight’s Facebook page below.

Another way is to link your profiles. Most social sites offer the ability to automatically publish your posts on Facebook and Twitter.

7. Custom Brand Your Social Profiles

Customising the look of your profile helps to re-enforce your brand and makes it more memorable and appealing. An appropriate background image, logo and a few other minor tweaks can achieve excellent results.  There are many well designed Facebook pages that you can use for inspiration.

8. Engage With Your Audience

You can take additional steps to engage with your audience and grow your network. Offering incentive to follow you or join your network is one way to achieve this.  See example below.

There are also many wordpress plug-ins that you can use to boost reader engagement.

9. Engage With Other Bloggers

Social media is a great way to connect with other bloggers in your niche. ReTweeting, liking or commenting on the content of other bloggers can get you noticed and can help build connections with other bloggers. They will often reciprocate by sharing your content or following you. Joining groups or lists is another way to do this.

10. Be Active and Consistent on Social Media

The more active you are, the faster will be your growth on social media and the more traffic and visitors you will receive on your blog. Consistently is equally important. It is not good to post 5 times a day in one month and not post even once in another month.

Summary:

Social media is a great way to promote your blog and attract new readers for your new blog posts. You can take advantage of the social media tips above to maximise your benefits.

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