Having an audience is what makes blogging fun! It can be worthwhile to write down your experiences for yourself, but the idea behind blogging is all about sharing with others. You need an audience for feedback. They create a dialogue between the author and reader. Many people love how easy it is to communicate with your audience while running a blog. You simply need to hit “reply” to be in instant contact with someone who has left a comment. When you first begin your blog it can be hard to gain your initial readers. You can use Social Media to promote your blog and find new members for your audience.
When you are first starting out it may be a good idea to look up some social media strategies for bloggers. Use this article and others to learn some valuable social media tips to help you start off strong. Focus primarily on big apps with huge user bases: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. These big sites can help you drive a lot of traffic to your blog and build an ongoing audience. Consider making a blog account or page for each of the major apps, something with a link to your website. Don’t forget to update your audience on ALL your accounts when you have news, to make sure to get the word out to all of your followers and friends.
First create a Facebook page for your blog. Here you can upload all sorts of content, send out updates, answer questions, and post links as well as a FAQ. Facebook has hundreds of features and tricks to making the most out of the site. You can even set it to automatically upload your posts on other sites to your Facebook page. For example, if you posted an image on Instagram it would automatically be uploaded to your Facebook. This is called automating a blog, and is something you should make sure to familiarize yourself with this process. It will save you loads of time and effort!
One thing to keep in mind is to never let your accounts remain inactive too long. You want to keep yourself relevant. If you stay inactive too long you may lose followers, so even if you’re busy you should try to do some quick updates. Remaining active and posting often is also good practice for search engine optimization. Everyone with a web presence should read about the basics of search engine optimization. It can tell you about subtle changes to make in the way you write, combined with some clever keyword research, can make your Google ranking go up. That means more people who are searching for content like yours will be exposed to your content via search engines like Google.
Next you should learn how to drive traffic with Pinterest. Pinterest is a social site that allows people to curate collections of web content across platforms. People can collect “pins” on different boards and create a sort of digital collage to share with other users. Let your ideas be shared by this thriving community of crafters and creatives of all kinds. You can share your own content, and like posts to help build mutual relationships online. Pinterest is a bit less mainstream but can be just as helpful in building a reader base if you know the right way to work it. Not to mention it can be addictively fun for hours on end, so be careful and don’t get too dragged in!
One of the most simple social Media accounts to run is an Instagram account. If you’re not technology savvy all you need to do is learn how to add a photo and a caption. For the rest of us there is the wonderful world of hashtags, direct messaging, and photo filters. Instagram forces you to take photos of things and over time you have a nice collection of photographs and graphics that perfectly represent you! Instagram easily integrates with other apps to post automatically on more than one platform. Consider the best way to use Instagram for your content, depending on your blogging topic.
WordPress
If you use WordPress to run your blog make sure that you have the Jetpack plugin. This plugin is helpful in dozens of ways including how you can link your blog to whichever social media accounts as you’d like to and automate the content so it posts itself automatically when you upload a new blog post on your site. Look around for some plugins or built in features for your blogging platform if you’re not using WordPress to run your blog. Automating content sharing is a great way to make sure to keep up with posting content to social media, and is especially helpful if you have a tight schedule or little interest in spending extra hours on social media promoting yourself.
Remember: Social Media can be Powerful and Fun
Social media is such a powerful tool that can really change the way that you blog. Try to keep your goals in mind and check in every once in a while to see if you are on track. Social media can be a fun part of blogging and it doesn’t need to feel like a chore. Keep in mind you are engaging directly with your audience! These are the people you are trying to reach with your blog in the first place. Social media just makes it easier to be heard. Create thoughtful content and watch subscribers flock to your blog!
