Social Media for your Blog or Website

You’ve created your blog or website, have committed to providing regular content, how do you promote this content? Luckily with the rise in popularity of social media you have several free avenues to get your content out to the masses (or at least your growing social media circle). In this post we go through social media for your blog or website and discuss the popular social media channels and what content/promotion works best.

 

Social media for your blog or website

 

We touched on a couple of these social media sites in a recent post about traffic, we will expand on this in more detail below.

 

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Facebook

About: The most popular social media site is Facebook. Facebook has a reputed 2 billion accounts (how many of these are fake accounts has yet to be established) and is the starting place for most blog or website owners when dipping their toes into social media.

For those unfamiliar, Facebook started in 2002 with Mark Zuckerberg and friends trying to build a website to connect people at their university. Eventually this exploded and after undergoing various transitions and iterations into the social media behemoth you see today.

What content is best suited: Lots! Video through Facebook, text through blog posts or even short posts additional to your content

Facebook is always looking at adding new products or services and looks at purchasing suitable add on businesses such as Instagram.

Suggestions for use: You can create separate content for your Facebook page or you can link to your previous content from your website or other channel. You can create a Q and A session either via text or via video. You can go live with your videos or you can post pre-filmed content. You can create quizzes to further drill down into the content that your readers and subscribers are chasing plus you can also use this feedback to tailor future products and content around your readers and subscribers.

 

Instagram

About: Instagram was set up in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and initially as a photography app called Burbn. Through its changes, growth and additional services, it has established itself as a market leader as a photo sharing app and as a social media giant.

Suited to which content: Given that Instagram is mainly a visual platform, the two major forms of content that works the best on this platform is video and pictures. It’s simple to post a quality photo with or without captions through to an Instagram story video. With the popularity of Instagram stories this has given marketers another way to tell the story of their brand and drive traffic and sales to their site or product.

Suggestions for use: If you operate an online store, posting pictures with captions of your product offering is a great way to stimulate sales. Adding a celebrity endorser makes this even more lucrative. You can also use Instagram to drive traffic to your website by posting highly attractive and catching pictures with content to help drive traffic to your site. As mentioned above, Instagram stories is also a great way to drive traffic or sales. You can create unique video content for your Instagram subscribers as another channel for getting your message out to your tribe. You can even post simple every day photos letting subscribers know what’s happening with you and your blog or website.

 

Twitter

About: Twitter was set up in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass initially as an idea for group communications with SMS. Through its changes, growth and additional services, it has established itself as a market leader of short form text communication and as a social media giant. Essentially you communicate using messages (known as tweets) and you can include hashtags to describe your post (like Instagram). The maximum amount of characters you can use in a tweet is 280 (recently increased from 140).

Suited to which content: Given that Twitter is mainly a text platform, the main form of content that works the best on this platform is text or linking to another site or platform. With twitter you can post a link to your website, pictures (via Instagram) and video (YouTube, Instagram and Facebook). It’s simple to post short form text (280 characters) With the popularity of Instagram stories this has given marketers another way to tell the story of their brand and drive traffic and sales to their site or product. One of the major benefits of Twitter is the direct contact it offers to famous people you previously wouldn’t be able to contact. Want to send a shout out to your favorite singer or sportsperson? Twitter allows you to do that (assuming they have Twitter accounts).

Suggestions for use: Finished a blog post you want your subscribers (and other twitter followers to read), post a link to your twitter page.

Twitter also allows you to re-purpose your existing content or advertise your existing content to your Twitter audience (such as a podcast episode or even an appearance at a conference or being interviewed). Want to get some of your popular videos to out to your Twitter subscribers, tweet out your link to your tribe.

If you operate an online store, you can advertise a sale or new products through tweets to your subscribers. You can also tweet pictures with captions of your product offering is a great way to stimulate sales. Also, adding a celebrity endorser makes this even more lucrative. You can also tweet your Instagram pictures to help drive traffic to your website through your twitter account. As mentioned above, as you can have direct contact with the influencer or brand owner you may want to have a twitter Q and A session where your followers can tweet you questions which you can answer directly. Not only is it allowing your followers to get in-depth access to you, you can also use these tweets as research for product growth.

 

Pinterest

About: Pinterest was launched in 2010 by Ben Silbermann as an idea for users to save pictures to their own boards. Essentially the concept of Pinterest hasn’t changed since it’s launch in 2010. Essentially you create your own board and save your picture (or pin) this to your board. You can follow other boards or invite others to follow your boards. You can search or follow a certain topic which give you access to boards about this topic.

Suited to which content: Given that Pinterest is mainly a visual platform, great pictures with captions or links are what is suited to Pinterest. With Pinterest you can post a link to a picture you pin or save to your board. One of the major benefits of Pinterest is getting access to various niches and the people who follow or who are interested in that particular niche. Infographics also work really well with Pinterest.

How to use: Save (or pin) great quality photos or infographics that can direct traffic to your blog or website. Make sure that there is a link, or your saved item is branded to allow viewers to get directed to your blog or website. This can also allow affiliate marketers to flourish by driving traffic to a landing page or affiliate link. Brands can even set up their own Pinterest virtual shop front.

Twitter also allows you to re-purpose your existing content or advertise your existing content to your Twitter audience (such as a podcast episode or even an appearance at a conference or being interviewed). Want to get some of your popular videos to out to your Twitter subscribers, tweet out your link to your tribe.

If you operate an online store, you can advertise your products or services to your readers or subscribers. As Pinterest allows you to track your metrics this offers a great way to analyse your data.

 

LinkedIn

About: LinkedIn is the preeminent business-orientated and networking social media website that is a popular method of generating traffic for bloggers and website owners. LinkedIn was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman (formerly of PayPal).

Suited to which content: Publishing written content was initially the main driver of traffic however LinkedIn has also branched out into video where you can branch out into an additional form of content.

How to use: Not only can LinkedIn offer you an audience to reach out to, you can also use the site for apply for work. If you are in the start up stage of your blog and website, you may be looking to take on clients or contracts or for some additional work to help fund your blog or website. LinkedIn can help in this regard.

Aside from the above, LinkedIn allows you to share written content (you can either use existing written content or you can tailor unique content for LinkedIn). The same goes for video.

 

YouTube

I’ve included this not because it is a social media site but because of the large potential reach that YouTube offers you and your videos.

About: Not only is YouTube the second biggest website online (behind Google) it is also the second biggest search engine online (also behind it’s fellow Alphabet stable mate Google). This gives you a lot of potential viewers to consume your content!

Suited to which content: Obviously video however you can also incorporate your other forms of content (i.e. info-graphics) in your videos. You can also create videos that replicate your existing content that you may be sending out in blog posts or in a podcast.

How to use: Remember that YouTube is also a massive search engine so make sure that your videos are optimized to appear in relevant searches for your niche or keyword. Also make sure that your thumbnail selections and video title are also researched to get better views. Set up your YouTube channel, look for tips for thumbnails, titles, etc.

When planning out your videos ask yourself what you want to achieve, what problem are you trying to solve? You can create videos which are a small portion of a course that you are offering, or you could create a short (free) version of a paid course that you are offering. You can use your videos as Q and A sessions or to reply to a question that your audience has asked, basically there are plenty of ways to use video and YouTube to grow your audience and direct traffic to your blog or website.

Others Platforms: There are other social media platforms such as Snapchat, Google Plus and who depending upon your niche may be suitable to drive traffic to your site.

 

A couple of things to bear in mind.

 

Never build your blog or website to depend upon traffic from only one source. What happens if the social media platform you depend upon for 100% of your traffic changes it’s algorithm so your traffic gets decimated? Then what happens to your traffic or earnings?

Make sure your traffic comes from several sources so if there is a change to one of your sources, your other sources can pick up the slack.

Also bear in mind that spending a lot of time placing your content on one of these social medial channels can be an issue, particularly if something happens to one of these sites. I think Facebook will be around for a few years yet, however what happens if your written content that you uploaded exclusively to Facebook if Facebook no longer existed? Same with YouTube videos. Make sure this content can be saved or at least a version used on your blog or website.

The main goal of using each of these social media sites is to direct traffic to your blog or website. Once there, make sure you have a plan to get the most out of this traffic not just for you and your site but for your reader or subscriber.

In the beginning you should focus on one social media channel, master this then move onto another channel. Decide which social media site will be best for your niche then focus on building an audience with this and make sure you start converting this to subscribers or conversions on your website.

 

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