You’ve carefully chosen a niche market that appeals to your blog readers. It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging directly to consumers or to other businesses in and out of your niche. You faithfully and consistently post new, interesting blogs complemented with high-quality images. You know a little bit about search engine optimization (SEO) and are on the fast track to monetizing your blog. That’s great news, but if you’re not incorporating social media into your blog, you’re missing out on a huge market. You’d be surprised at the number of blogs who do not optimize their blogs for social media.
Just like small businesses, any type of blog can get a big boost from social media. This might include the biggies like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, but, depending on your blog, there are a slew of lesser-known social media sites you might benefit from. This doesn’t mean you use your existing personal social media to gain new readers (although you can also do that). It means creating a new social media presence just for your blog.
Finding Your Social Readers
Let’s say you’ve created a blog all about swimming, plunge pools, flotation therapy and other related topics. Maybe your latest blog covers the benefits of plunge pools and the best types for different people. If you’re not actively sharing this information and encouraging others to share, you’re simply hoping for the best and that people will stumble upon your blog. That’s not the best marketing strategy.
Keep in mind that your blog has many similar traits to a small business. You need to market your services, in this case your blog, and draw your readers out of the woodwork. Create a social media site where you imagine your readers are. Now it’s time to find like-minded people, such as those who like other swim or pool-related sites, and encourage them to like you. This calls for a little temptation.
Getting People to Follow or Like You
The easiest way to get someone to like you or follow you is to offer an incentive. For bloggers, this means it’s the value of your blog alone. Don’t just write a blog for the sake of doing so. Gather truly interesting, shocking or useful information. Present it clearly, complete with a video or quality infographic, that’s designed to get people to share it.
If your blog allows for an incentive such as having a winning follower featured, or if you have something tangible to give away, do so. The goal here is to go viral, and you need to pique some interest. While in this stage it’s important to stay in everyone’s good grace, it’s equally important not to flood people’s newsfeeds. This can get an unlike or have your posts hidden.
You must also make sure that your posts on your actual blog are easily shareable on both desktop and mobile devices. Having easily accessible and visible sharing buttons to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+ is imperative to your blog’s social media success. If you have an awesome post with viral potential, but don’t have shareable buttons on the post, your blog post will most likely be forgotten.
Check Your Time
By now, you know that having a blog takes a serious investment in time and energy. Don’t underestimate the demands of social media. If you’re going to utilize social media to increase your blog readers, this will require the same consistent attention. No social media presence is worse than a spotty or neglected one.
Don’t sign up for every social media site you can find in an effort to win the numbers game. People can quickly tell if social media presence is genuine and they’re turned off by pages that aren’t up to par. You need to dedicate a little time each workday to updating your social media site, creating engaging posts and responding to comments.
Is It Really Worth It?
The short answer is yes, but that’s assuming you have the time and energy to give social media the attention is requires. Otherwise, how are you outreaching to potential readers? SEO is great, but that assumes people are Googling words that relate directly to your blog. Social media is a free, relatively easy way to connect with potential readers.
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