| |

How Social Media Can Be Magic For Your Blog

Sharing is caring!

Social media can be the magic that helps people find your blog articles. A few years ago, blogging and social media were separate. Blogging was long-form, serious, and crafted. Social media was short-form, personal, and spontaneous. Some people predicted that social media would replace blogging because of declining attention spans.

Blogging and social media not only amicably co-exist, they complement each other. The trick is to use a blog to enrich your social media with long-form posts and to use social media to promote your blog. This article explains how to integrate social media and blogging.

Here's the heart of the social media magic – you must invest the time to optimize and share your blog articles. You are the magic: you and some elbow grease. I hope you find a few things here to add to your blog promotion and find some new magic.

The heart of the social media magic - you have to put in the time, optimize & share your blog posts. Click To Tweet

1. Share your own content

If someone looking for great content came across your blog, would they share your posts? I hope so. And haven’t the people who followed you desired to see your work? Logically, then, you should share your posts through social media. If you don’t like your posts, who will?

Of all content, you should curate yourself and share your posts. If a post is not worth sharing, it’s not worth writing.

2. Add drama

Every post should contain a picture or video. Make it as easy as possible for people to share your content.

“Visual content has been shown to do well on social media. According to an article by Buffer, content with images gets 94% more views and receives 150% more retweets.”

Adding great images makes them look like rock stars on their social media. This will lead to more likes, comments, and shares for their content. And hopefully, they'll come back to your blog to share more!

Unbounce recently wrote, “Visual content may be more work, but don’t underestimate its potential when it comes to putting your content (and your brand) in front of a broader audience.” They found their two most tip-shared articles were due to Pinterest traffic. “Visual content has been shown to do well on social media. According to an article by Buffer, content with images gets 94% more views and receives 150% more retweets.”

3. Add social share buttons

Make sharing your blog posts friction-free by adding share buttons on your blog.

Rather than adding each platform’s button, there are products such as ShareThis that install multiple share buttons. There are lots of plugins for blogs that will create a good social sharing experience for your readers.

I use the Tasty Pins WordPress plugin for optimized Pinterest sharing.

4. Entice people to follow you on social media

Include links to your social media accounts on your blog so people can easily follow you.

Whereas share buttons take people to specific blog posts, these links take people to your social media accounts. If your blog is interesting, people will follow you on social media, and if your social media is engaging, people will read your blog.

5. Add a “ClickToTweet” link

A service called ClickToTweet enables you to embed a Twitter link in your blog posts and emails. When people click this link, they are presented with a draft tweet. They can edit this draft or tweet it immediately.

My experience is that many people are happy to do this for two reasons: first, it’s an easy way to generate a good tweet; second, it’s a way to thank you for your efforts.

Add a click to tweet option in your blog posts. Make it easy for people to share your content. Click To Tweet

6. Pin every post

You should make a Pinterest post for every blog post. Then, when people re-pin a Pinterest post, it reappears in the public timeline.

Pins have a long “shelf life” as they “reincarnate” and drive more traffic to your blog post. Nothing has the staying power of a Pinterest post.

Pinterest is fun and boosts creativity, but at its social media heart, Pinterest is marketing. Very smart marketing! [read article]

7. Add a “Pin it for later” option

Many people pin articles to remind themselves to read them later or to collect them for future reference. You can make this easy by adding a link in your blog post with a call-to-action that says, “Pin it for later,” which points to the article’s pin.

Here are five “Pin it for Later” CTAs that you could use:

  1. Don't Miss Out! Pin This for Later!
  2. Love These Tips? Pin to Your Board!
  3. Save the Goodness! Pin This Post Now!
  4. Want to Revisit? Pin it and Come Back Anytime!
  5. Keep This Handy! Pin it for Future Reference!

8. Add your blog to Alltop

Alltop is the RSS-feed aggregation site that helps people scan the news and find content. You can submit your blog’s RSS feed to get it on an Alltop page. The process is free, so you have little downside.

For example, if you want to position yourself as an expert in adoption, you should try to list your blog in Adoption.alltop. Go here to submit your blog for any Alltop topic.

How to “Peg” your post

Guy Kawasaki coined this term when we were writing The Art of Social Media. From this day forth, “Peg” is a verb that means totally integrating social media and blogging. These are the ten steps that I use to promote a blog post to illustrate what it means:

  1. Write multiple interesting and click-worthy versions of the blog title.
  2. Create three images in Canva: 1000 pixels by 1500 pixels, 940 pixels by 788 pixels, and 876 pixels by 438 pixels.
  3. Pin the 1000 pixels x 1500 pixels image on Pinterest with two links (one in the description field and one in the source field) back to the blog post. Embed the pin on your blog post with the Pinterest widget.
  4. Share the link to your post on LinkedIn with the 940 pixels by 788 pixels image. Make sure the image name matches the title of your post, or LinkedIn will show image819809754.jpg, which isn’t impressive.
  5. Share on Facebook profile and page with the 940 pixels x 788 pixels image with less text than the Google+ post. Add a question to start the conversation on Facebook and two links: one to the blog and one to the Pinterest post.
  6. Tweet the blog post with the 876 pixels by 438 pixels image.
  7. Schedule additional tweets with quotes from the post using the different titles.
  8. Share your article in relevant LinkedIn and Facebook groups and Google+ communities.
  9. Add relevant hashtags when you share your post so more people can find it.
  10. Create an Instagram Story or Reel to share your post on Instagram.

Remember to share to bookmarking sites

Bookmarking is a great way to balance how and where you’re sharing your content. It helps index your content for search and creates a catalog, making it easy for anyone to find. Remember, they’re also a social sharing site. Some people still prefer to get their daily news there.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save creative ideas.  Add the Pinterest browser button so you can add pins from anywhere on the web.

Reddit

Reddit is a unique social bookmarking and news website with a unique community. Search by “sub-Reddits” that act as categories.

Scoop.it

Scoop.it is a bookmarking and curation website where you can create magazines based on topic or niche. Add content from across the web to your Scoop.it account and let others begin to find you based on similar interests.

Ready to add some extra magic to your blog for additional blog traffic and social media mentions? Of course, you are!

Sharing is caring!

15 Comments

  1. Trying to start writing a blog about Startups in India and the world. Thank you for some genius tips. Just shared your post on my twitter handle @prosunjoyi to my 3.5K followers. You may count me in as your new fan 🙂

  2. Hi Peg

    Nice post. The “How to peg your post” is something new to me. The three image sizes and a different size for a different social media site, great one.

    BizSugar works nicely for me. Which is your favorite social media site?

    Sincerely Sameer

  3. Hey Peg, I never knew I was “Pegging” my content, but I do most of these things, too. The one thing I haven’t been doing — and it’s brilliant — is embedding the Pinterest pic into the post. That makes so much better sense than not linking it at all! Wonderful tip! Thanks.

  4. Many great tips and lots to learn! I’m pinning this for later – will try to work more on social media after summer holidays.

Comments are closed.