Congratulations, you've created a great blog that exudes industry experience, professionalism, and trust. Now comes the fun part: promoting your blogging efforts on social media. You don't have time to fully maximize all major networks to their fullest potential, and so you're faced with the challenge of selecting the right social networks to generate the most bang for your blog promotion buck. Lucky for you, we've given this topic some thought.
Start with the Basics: Facebook and Twitter. We suggest promoting your blogs on these two networks, at the minimum. Facebook, of course, remains popular and its interface is particularly attuned to the written word. By pasting a key excerpt from your blog along with the link, you'll give the content the attention it deserves. More importantly, Facebook's format allows you to generate engagement with followers by, for example, posing a question or asking for feedback. Furthermore, if you have some extra change rattling around, you can purchase Facebook ads to help boost particular blog posts. Twitter, on the other hand, may not seem like a natural fit for the written word; after all, the network only allows 140-character posts. But just like Facebook, by posting a shortened link to the post, you can effectively engage followers and leads.
Know Your Audience. To use a heavy-handed analogy, there's no point in trying to promote a financial blog post on, say, retirement tips on Snapchat, a network dominated by teenagers. Therefore, get a deeper understanding of where your buyer personas spend their time. Let's take some examples. Pinterest, for starters, is primarily trafficked by females; a perfect platform for say, wedding planners or boutique retailers. In fact, posting blogs on Pinterest is an art in an of itself, as your content should be supplemented with a pinnable image. For more guidance along those lines, click here. On the other hand, a platform like LinkedIn is used by educated and affluent networkers, technology experts, and other professionals. Great for financial brands, solar firms, and realtors, but not the optimal space for retailers or leisure brands. Instagram, meanwhile, is a highly visually-based network and not an obvious choice for promoting your blog.
Explore Niche Networks. Let's say you spend 50 percent of your blog promotion time on Facebook and 30 percent on Twitter. Where do you spend the remaining 20 percent? Well, once again, we encourage you match your efforts to your buyer personas. Google+, for example, certainly isn't as popular as Facebook, but the platform has its share of loyal users. Most users on Google+ are male (67%) and many are students. The platform is particularly popular with software engineers and consultants, so if you're targeting the tech sector, it's a smart place to be. In fact, certain brands will want to go a step further. A simple Google search will reveal unique social networks geared towards specific industries or professions. For example, if you want to reach out to lawyers, you'll want to explore social networks for attorneys, like Foxwordy and Esqspot.
Lastly, don't forget the power of blogging widgets — much of the promotional work can be automated and can help you reach content aggregators like Reddit and Stumbleupon, just to name a few.
What do you think? What social media sites did we neglect to mention? Which are the most important in promoting your blogging efforts? The least important?
