HOW TO: Use Social Media To Promote Your blog

Regardless of whether you are a newbie or a season blogger, I am sure you could always do with more traffic to your blog. And Social Media is a great marketing tool, if you haven’t noticed it already. Chances are you may be using some of these social media platforms. But there are still many who are not in a hurry to jump into the bandwagon yet. Perhaps they are afraid of the unknown or maybe because they do not know how to use the social media to their advantage. Well, that’s what this article is all about, to list down the different social media and how they could help promote your blog.

Wikipedia defines social media as “the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue”. Examples of social media include the undisputed heavyweights Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as well as LinkedIn, Digg and MySpace, just to name a few. Does social media marketing works? Well, according to Nielson, the world population spends 22% of online time at social networks and blog sites. Given this and the fact that social media attracts millions of users every day, it is thus safe to say that social media sites are one of the cheapest and most effective internet marketing tool available today. So the next question will be how to use these social media sites to promote your blog.

Get An Account

The first step is obviously signing up an account with the relevant social media. Some allow you to set a business accounts page like Facebook while others are networking on a professional level like LinkedIn. And then there is Twitter whom many online businesses and bloggers love for its simplicity and the speed at which information can be sent. It is advisable to check beforehand the rules and regulations regarding the setting up of your own account.

Linking Your Blog Posts To The Social Media Sites

The next step is to link up your blog posts to the social media sites. Whenever you publish a new post, update it on your social media account. Tweet about your latest post or perhaps ask a question and then place a link back to your blog. Alternatively, you can include an interesting extract of the post into your Facebook wall. You will be bound to create some curiosity. Just remember to provide a link back to your blog.

Add Social Media Buttons In Your Posts

There are WordPress plugins which you can install to have social media buttons in your posts. Generally, most bloggers would prefer to have them at the bottom of the posts but you can place them anywhere in your post. The idea is to allow your readers to easily share your posts through the social media platforms. You can check out SexyBookmarks, an increasingly popular WordPress plugin which places cute social media buttons on your posts and pages.

Engage and Convert Readers

Interesting blog content is a must. Think carefully about the topics that you want to write on. Remember that quality is more important than quantity. You need to engage your readers first before you can convert them into followers and subsequently, to get them to help you spread the word about your blog. Be approachable and friendly, and reply to comments and questions. This will encourage your readers to share your blog and its contents.

Automatically Feed Content

Some Social Media sites has settings to automatically feed content from your blog to their network so that you can save a good amount of time and effort. This is a great way to entice your readers and friends to check out your blog or your social media accounts. At the same time, it provides a platform for them to share your blog with their friends.

There you go, some of the steps that you can take to benefit on social media’s popularity to promote and market your blog. They will help you improve your blog’s traffic and subsequently SEO. This in turn will translate into credibility and from there, you may even experience exponential growth in your blog’s traffic and readers.

This article is written by Alicia. She is a web designer and developer. Loves WordPress themes and plugins. If you wish to write for us, kindly check this.