This is a question that a lot of bloggers ask me so I’ve decided to write a blog post about it and hopefully help others that are asking the same.

One of the things you definitely need to do in order to promote your blog and get traffic is to use Social Media. That is a fact.

But even if you use a social media management tool, it is still time consuming. Because you need to tweak the content to different social media channels, create images with different sizes to go on each one, etc, etc.

And it can get very confusing. Do you need to be on Twitter? What about Instagram? And Pinterest? I totally get it!

So how do you decide which social networks to use?

Instead of just going crazy trying to be everywhere, you just need to focus on where your audience already is.

And how do you do this?

Research your niche

One of the ways to decide if you should invest in a social media network is by researching your niche in each one.

You can do this in several ways:

1. Check top bloggers

Go on Google, write the keywords of your niche and topics of your blog, and check the blogs on page 1. There are also many lists of the top bloggers on each niche. You can for example search for “top fashion bloggers”.

Visit their blogs and see which social media “follow me” buttons they have. You might be surprised to actually see that they’re only active in a couple of social media channels.

The reason for that is because they’re focusing on where their audience is. And instead of spreading themselves too thin across a lot of channels, they focus their efforts exactly where their results are.

3. Search for keywords and hashtags

Another way you can research your audience is by going on each social network and do a keyword research.

For example if you blog about “travelling to Europe”, write that on the search feature on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and other channels.

See how many people are using those keywords, if the hashtags are popular, if there are many updates and conversations going on about that topic.

If there is, great, join in! If there isn’t you might want to consider two things:

• Your audience isn’t there. So, go look elsewhere.

• Your audience is there but funnily enough there aren’t many bloggers investing in that channel. It might be a great opportunity for you!

Look at your Google Analytics

If you’re a savvy blogger you have the Google Analytics code installed on your blog.

Because you need to know which traffic sources are actually driving people to your blog.

If you go to:

• Acquisition
• Overview
• Channels
• Social

It will tell you how many visitors are coming from each one of the social media networks you’re investing in. And this can help you decide if it is worth it to continue.

For example, if the top bloggers in your niche are having amazing results from Pinterest (many followers, repins, likes, etc) but you are not, maybe it’s time to invest a bit more of your efforts into Pinterest.

But if you realise that none of the top bloggers in your niche are actually using this social channel and you are not having results either, you need to consider if you want to invest in it.

You might want to stay with some social media channels and share updates there for mainly SEO reasons, but the place where you interact, comment, spend more time and effort, should be on where your audience is and the channels that are providing you results.

Stay tuned to new social media channels

Every year there are new social media channels being born.

Some of them will become huge successes like Pinterest or Instagram, others will disappear and no one will ever remember them.

Anyway, stay tuned to what happens and to new channels appearing. You never know if they’re going to be great to your niche and your audience will love it.

And being one of the first ones in there can really make all the difference.

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