We have quickly learned that Social Media has had a major impact on the way businesses advertise and market themselves. We know large companies advertise by placing adds online and taking advantage of free social media sites, but many of us don’t realize that we can advertise our blogs the same way. According to 30 ways to promote your blog by John Swarts, sharing your posts on social media sites should be your first “avenue for promotion”.
Here is how to promote your blog on social networks:
Facebook: Add it on your personal and or your business page and or groups.
Twitter: Frequently tweet a link to your blog posts.
LinkedIn: Share on your profile, and in groups you belong
Google+: Share with your circles and share publicly for added SEO benefits.
Pinterest: Create a board specifically for all your posts and pin each post to it.
There are many other sites like Foursquare, Stumble Upon and Digg.com that could be very effective when promoting your blogs but the ones mentioned above seem to be the most popular.
It all sounds so easy, but trust me, it’s not! For the past couple of weeks I have been sharing my links through Facebook, Twitter and even other bloggers. Although I’ve gotten a couple of views as a result, sharing my links on these sites doesn’t seem to be enough.
As a different approach, I decided to try a different type of social media, Pinterest: a photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, and hobbies. Users can browse other pinboards for images, “re-pin” images to their own pinboards, or “like” photos. (google) According to The Pinterest Chapter, Part One: Using Pinterest To Promote Your Blog by Susan Getgood, “initially the ethos of Pinterest was to share others’ content, not your own, and in fact, commercial (ie promotional) activity was prohibited.” November 2012, this changed, Pinterest launched business accounts.
The article lists some tips on how Pinterest can support your “promotional strategy” with some suggestions for “maximizing your Pinterest promotion.” Here are some that I found very helpful:
- “Convert your personal Pinterest account to a business account. Per the Pinterest Terms Of Service, you MUST do this if you are planning to use your Pinterest account for commercial purposes.”(Getgood)
- Make sure you have high quality images
- Give your boards names that clearly identify what sort of content folks will find if they visit the board.
- Pin when your audience is online and engaging with Pinterest.
This where some tips that can help you promote your blog, or anything if you think about. The approach that you need to take towards promoting your blog is very similar to what a business would do. Share pictures and links on social media sites. Why? Because companies are taking advantage of free social sites ,and we as bloggers should too! Although sharing information online get’s your name out there, what brings people in to view your blogs, or to view your business, is interaction. By interacting and creating a relatioship with people online, you are more likely to be more succesful. You have to show interest in the people, so that they would show an interest in you.
Sources:
Getgood, Susan. The Pinterest Chapter, Part One: Using Pinterest To Promote Your Blog. May 29 2013. Getgood.com. Web. Nov 13 2013.http://getgood.com/roadmaps/2013/05/29/the-pinterest-chapter-part-one-using-pinterest-to-promote-your-blog/
Social Monster 