Are you trying to find solutions to boosting traffic on your blog? Although some might consider blogging old school, you’d be surprised at how many people still enjoy reading them. If you’re struggling with low readership don’t give up just yet. After all you’re committed to putting in the time and effort to produce quality content, why let it go to waste? Whether your blog is a part of your SEO strategy for your business, or your form of content creation it’s still important to get it out there to your audience. So you might want to consider how you can promote your blog on social media.
This is a classic marketing technique known as cross promotion. So before we share out tips for promoting your blog on social media, let’s break this down first.
What is Social Media Cross Promotion?
Very simply, social media cross promotion is when you share the same content across multiple platforms. This can be a particular campaign, product launch or idea. In our case, we’re dealing with promoting blogs. The thing when you promote your blog on social media, especially using multiple platforms, is you need to customize each message to the platform and audience you’re using.
In other words, you need to make sure that the forms of content you are sharing to promote your blog fit the platform. For example using Instagram or Pinterest means you content should be visually dominant. Twitter on the other hand has character limitations compared to Facebook, so you’ll need to keep it short and sweet. You also don’t want to come off to repetitive to anyone who may follow you across multiple platforms.
You also need to consider things like content types and the use of hashtags. On Instagram you might want to post a photo in your feed, but also do an Instagram Story to capture viewers there. And while Twitter and Instagram do great with hashtags, using them on Facebook doesn’t really produce the same results when it comes to reach.
How to Promote Your Blog on Social Media
Maximize Instagram
Instagram is a great place to promote your blog on social media because of its versatility, although it does have it challenges. The main one being since it’s a visual based platform, sharing links isn’t always the easiest. Including a link in your bio is the standard way clickable links are shared. In addition to that, profiles with over 10K followers have the swipe up feature in Stories. The downfall to this is not everyone has access to swipe up, and constantly changing your link in bio can be a little tiresome. We have a solution that we’ll get to a bit later.
Now asides from those small hurdles, Instagram should still be considered for promoting your blog. Your posts may have a lifespan in your audience’s feeds, but it stays on your grid permanently. Essentially making its viability endless. While your captions can’t share clickable links, they do allow for calls to action, which Instagrammers are used too. You can also use Instagram Ads to promote your post to get clicks directly to your blog.
If you do have access to the swipe up feature, use it for promoting your blog. Instagram Stories are still one of the most popular ways users view content on the platform. And although your Stories have a 24hr lifespan, they can live eternally on your Highlights. This also helps gain exposure to your blog in general since Highlights are in plain sight on your profile.
Finally, Instagram is one social media network that relies partially on the use of hashtags. This means when using it to market your blog, you should never forget to use hashtags. Always remember that less is more, and to stick to hashtags that relate to your blog topic or overall niche.
Share It on Facebook
Facebook is one of those social media sites that is all about community. People exchange ideas, opinions and advice daily. So sharing your blog to your Facebook profile or page is a natural way to promote it. Another bonus is Facebook is perfect for sharing long format written content. This means not only can you share the link to your post but you can also share a portion of it to your timeline.
You might also want to consider how link friendly Facebook is. Once a link is written or pasted into your post draft it generates a preview, at which point you can remove the link. This removes the need for bulky links in your copy and having to create a graphic for the platform. Keep in mind though Facebook will generate the image based on what is published on your blog. So be sure to set your feature image that will be used for things like social media and search engines.
Tweet Short Excerpts on Twitter
You might think that Twitter is dead, but don’t count it out just yet. Over 200 million people use it daily in a similar fashion to Facebook. They are there to exchange ideas, learn information and discuss opinions. The only difference from Facebook really is the limitation in characters, which they have doubled to 280 from it’s original 140.The biggest bonus to Twitter is the audience there is generally looking for news, or specific topics of discussion. So if your blog touches on topics that either fit current events or ideas of interest you should especially be considering Twitter.
A great way to use Twitter to promote your blog on social media is to share short excerpts from the post with a link to continue reading. Make sure to pick parts that will generate interest and curiosity to encourage that traffic. Similar to Facebook Twitter will also generate a preview of your blog with your feature image. If you are creating a thread and want to avoid the repetitiveness there are a few ways to do this. First, you can consider only including you link in the first and last tweet of the thread. This could however minimize the chances of clicks. Your other option is to still include the link, but override the preview by uploading an image you included within the post.
Twitter being the originating place of the hashtag thrives off of them. It’s always a good idea to include a couple hashtags in your tweets preferably at the end to keep things looking neat.
Pin It on Pinterest
Many always seem to forget about Pinterest, but it’s a valuable tool when it comes to promoting blog posts. The purpose of Pinterest is to pin images and links of inspiration to organized boards on ones feed. This ranges from a wide variety of topics from home improvements to beauty routines. What intimidates many with Pinterest is that the platform is extremely visual in nature, even more so then Instagram. While with the latter you can get away with a simple photography Pinterest is dominated by graphic designer level content. The truth is, Pinterest content couldn’t be easier to make with just a little help from some tools.
Using tools like Canva make it effortless for anyone to put together pin-worth content with the help of templates. All you need is an image or two from your original post and within 10 minutes you’ll be ready to share you blog on Pinterest. You also have a description area where you’ll get 500 characters to draw your audience into reading, and hopefully pinning, your post. Pinning your post is the Facebook version of sharing, meaning you’ll get more eyes potentially on your content for free.
Use a Link Landing Page
Remember when we said we had a solution to the hurdles for sharing links on Instagram? Well this is it! Using a link landing page services like Linktree is a great way to organize multiple links to share on social media. Many will include their landing page link in their profiles as an easy way for their audience to access multiple channels of importance.
When it comes to promoting the link to your blog you can do it a coupe different ways. You can either have a link directly to your blog homepage, and from there you audience make their way to the post of their choice. Alternatively you can have a direct link if you’re looking to promote a specific post.
