Which Social Media Platforms are Right For Your Blog

You can build many communities online; those are basically social media communities. Where many people assume that sharing in social media is quite easy, the majority of blog owners discover that it needs a considerable amount of work to do more than just share all the blog posts on the social media.

Here I will discuss some important key ways that will help you bring more traffic to the blog. Prior to that social media, communities have to be established. I will show you the tactics and techniques that will help you to achieve the maximum out of your efforts. These tactics will further help you to market the blog posts on the social media. These tactics have helped in building some of the successful blogs.

Choosing the ideal social networks

It has become quite natural for new social networks to come out every now & then. There are niche social networks & big social networks as well. There are many opportunities and scopes to promote & market your blog on the entire social network.

However, in some cases, it is not viable to try promoting in all of them. Though few have tried using all the social networks, the common outcome is multiple accounts but a little or no interaction. Therefore, a clever strategy is to concentrate on just a few or just one social network.

Follow these easy steps and they will help you choose the ideal social network to market your blog.

Step One: Identifying the target reader

You should start by identifying users who you want to be your target readers. You should also find out the social networks these readers are most active in. Some are active in many social networks and some use just one or, sometimes, two social networks.

Step Two: Find out the expected traffic of the targeted social networks

From my experience, I can safely conclude that the social media platforms that are capable of sending most of the traffic to blogs are as follows.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Pinterest
• Google+
• Instagram

The results may vary depending on the target reader. If the blog post is written keeping in mind the preferences of professional readers & business, then you might get more traffic from Google+ and Linkedin. If you target readers who are more visual then it could be more useful if you concentrate on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.

Then as soon as the traffic improves, you can analyze and understand the traffic in order to understand if your target readers are visiting your blog. Keep an eye on bounce rates on the posts. You should then segment out the traffic from the social networks. You can investigate if the traffic from a particular group of networks gives better traffic compared to others.

Automate Content Sharing

Social media marketing is quite time consuming. We have already understood the method of enhancing online communities, which allow you to promote & market to them repeatedly. It is quite a big task to enhance those communities. And as soon as you have built them it is again a big task marketing & promoting the blog posts to these communities.

But the good news is that there are tools, which will help to make it simple and easier. Automation is your ally when you share the blog posts on the social media.

In this section, I will take you through the steps required for automating & how much of the content sharing as possible.

Step one: WordPress sharing

When you utilize the Jetpack for WordPress plugin then the WordPress sharing can be done. It gives you a few services that include sharing function, which helps in automating sharing to a limited social network and stats right in the WordPress.

(https://jetpack.com/support/publicize/)

Step two: Buffer

This is called freemium social sharing tool and with its free version one can easily schedule as much as ten posts for about a bunch of various social profiles including Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin profiles.

If you plan to try Buffer’s free version then that is an ideal place to start, you will have to setup the entire social profile, which you are allowed. There are some social profiles like a company page on Linkedin that will need the premium version.

Step Three: Dlvr.it

This is another similar automation tool, which will help you to share recent posts to social profiles automatically. You can easily set this up with the help of RSS feed for the blog. With its free plan, you will get 5 feeds and 3 social profiles.

This helps you in not only sharing only the content from your blog but can also help you to share from 4 other blogs. This gives you a chance to help others and in turn, that may positively assist you in the near future.

Re-post content

Re-posting blog content helps you to achieve the full potential out of the content. As the blog will grow, the collection of articles will also grow with it. But every article won’t be a hit instantly. You can give these articles a new approach by continuing to market & promote on social media; also through other channels as well.

Following are the steps that you should take in order to re-post the content on the social media profiles. This will further help you to improve the traffic of organic social media to the blog.

Step one: Choose older posts for sharing

You can choose to create a spreadsheet for this task but there are easier and convenient methods too.

First, open up the WordPress dashboard & select the post link located in the left-hand navigation. This will reveal you the previous posts on the blog and it will show 20 at one time by default.

 If you select the Screen Options located at top right then you will get an option to watch more.

For this task, 20 works, and more could work depending on the number of posts you intend to schedule at a time.

Open a new tab, then open Buffer or even if you just sharing an old post at one time then you can also open up other social profiles.

Step two: Create new titles

First of all, choose a post that you intend to share and because all the posts will be wonderful you can select any of them. You will find an original title for post that you can utilize again if it’s good. But if you intend to share something new & fresh then you should make a new title.

Step three: Share previous posts using Buffer

You can type the title into the Buffer or into other social profiles where you need to share.

You will have to right click on an option called, ‘View Link’ beneath the post you are sharing & then feed it to the Buffer or you can paste it in that profile, where you will share the post.

Step four: Retweet old posts with the help of WordPress Plugins

Use the plugins that can automatically retweet the old blog posts. Also, you can line-up these tweets in order to be published at intervals like every hour or two hours or more, throughout the whole day & whole week. Following are some plugins.

• Evergreen Post
• Tweeter
• Tweetily
• Revive Old Post

Utilize social sharing buttons

Step one: restrict sharing buttons to the sources of core social traffic

It is necessary to concentrate on exclusively some social networks for certain reasons. If you keep many buttons on the blog then this will confuse the users & eventually slow down the page speed.

For a majority of blogs, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and will be the exclusive social sharing buttons that should be kept on the blog posts. Though it is alluring to put more buttons, the studies show that if too many options are presented to a person, he/she will not choose any of the option.

Step two: Use WordPress Plugins

The WordPress has many plugins that will make it convenient for you to keep social sharing buttons on the blog posts. The following are the popular social sharing plugins.

• Sharebar WP
• Socializer
• Scrolling social sharebar
• Social Share bar (Digg Digg Alternative)
• FlareShare-this

Sharing pieces or snippets without links

This is yet another tactic that you can employ to market blog content without actually having to promote the blog content. Some users on platforms such as facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest don’t really appreciate when a profile share is just titles & links to their blog.

In order to make your profiles more alluring, you should share something that appears to be just ‘social media only’ content. Here’s how you can do it.

• Step one: Identify a post & then pull out 3-5 snippets
• Step two: Line up the snippets with the help of buffer
• Step three: Share concise tips that would make it a worthwhile blog post

Hashtags

We are all familiar with hashtags but not all of us are aware of tactics and specific rules for using hashtags. Here are they.

Step one: Identify popular and relevant for the blog post

You can use services that will help you to select frequently used hashtags that are related to your posts.

Step two: Use hashtags to line-up social updates for the blogs.

Include hashtags while utilizing the tools shared with social media. If you still feel the need for more hashtags, you can create another post with separate hashtags & put the link that will be connected to your post.

Promote On Facebook

Facebook is still, by a wide margin, the most popular and potential social media marketing platform. Following are the important steps for promoting your post utilizing all of the facebook’s features.

Step one: Share your posts with potential & relevant Facebook groups.

Step two: Message your connections including your friends & colleagues and request to share post.

Step three: Join and add groups on Facebook and share the content.

Promote on Twitter

The following are some tactics & techniques for getting more viewers for the blog post or articles on Twitter:

Step one: Find out users who have tweeted related or similar content and then reply to them.

Step two: Request people to share the new post, which has shared your content previously.

Step three: Maintain a twitter list for types of contents.

Promote on Google+

Here are some techniques and tactics for taking benefits of all that Google+ can offer.

Step one: Get yourself in Google+ communities & then share the blog post.

Step two: Select people that have previously shared similar content & then share the content with those people.

Promote on Linkedin

Here’s how you can promote blog posts on Linkedin:

Step one: Select relevant Linkedin groups and then share your post there.

Step two: message directly to those who are in your contact list.

Final Thoughts

Starting a blog online is easier compared to early days. One can easily get his/her blog started with the help of many online companies that offer services like starting a blog or a website.

Although, sharing blog content on the social media is nothing less than an art. There are no correct ways to do it. Many have tasted success sharing blog contents in their own remarkable way. While few will share just the blog link on social media, others prefer sharing a high percent of original content.

But like most of the things in our life, the best approach often lies somewhere in between. If you try the strategies that I have shared with you in this article, then you can achieve sustainable traffic to the blog from social media. And with the passing time, I believe that you would be capable of adapting the strategies and tactics to blend your business and your unique blog.