After investing your precious time and skills in writing the perfect blog post, your work still isn’t done. People need a way to find your content, and social media is the quintessential blog distribution powerhouse.
Studies show that nearly 96% of bloggers say they use social media to promote their blog posts; and 87% citing social media as the most common avenue for sharing content.
Let’s explore seven social media strategies to distribute your blog posts and increase your traffic:
1. Share On Your Social Accounts
At the bare minimum, every blog you write should find a home on your own social media channels. Bloggers typically have a Facebook page or group, a Twitter account, Pinterest, and LinkedIn in their mix, among other channels. Regardless of what’s in your social profile, your blog content should be published on each one.
This can take some finessing, as you’ll need to tweak your post for each channel. For example, your Facebook post will need an attractive image and catchy copy. You can afford to be a little descriptive here, unlike Twitter, who bears a 280-character limit on posts (including links). On Pinterest, your biggest click magnet will be your image, which studies show should have a 2:3 aspect ratio.
2. Promote with Paid Ads
Organic reach is dropping ever lower, particularly on social media, and Facebook, especially. It used to be that you could publish your content and all your fans would see it. But reports note that only about 10% of your Facebook followers will see your posts, so even if you have a ton of fans, they’re going to miss some of your content.
Unfortunately, social media has become a pay-to-play world for bloggers. But think of this as a good thing: not every blogger is willing to shell out money for ads, which can help you cut through the competition. Plus, you can use paid advertising to target your ads and reach people beyond your existing fanbase.
And don’t just stop with Facebook ads. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, make sure you are aware of ‘where’ your target audience is online so you can ensure you have a presence there with your content as well.
3. Share in Niche Groups
One of the biggest benefits of using social media for blog distribution is the potential to reach billions of users around the world. More than 3.5 billion people are connected to the internet, with 2.4 billion users on Facebook alone.
Of course, you’re not trying to reach every single person in the world. But given such a large global audience, there’s a good chance that some of those people are the exact type of people that can benefit from your blog content.
Social media platforms like Reddit and Facebook make it easy to niche down and find specific types of people that fit your reader profile. You can even use Facebook Groups or Subreddits to do your blog topic research prior to writing, then share your results with the audiences who inspired your post in the first place.
4. Add to Your FB and Insta Stories
Once you publish your blog on your Facebook page or Instagram, it’s only a couple more clicks to add it to your Story. Stories give your content animation and visual appeal. You can add unique camera effects, captions, and emojis to jazz up your post, then share it with your followers. Even better, users can comment on and engage with your stories just like a regular post.
What’s unique about Stories is that they disappear in 24 hours (similar to Snapchat stories). This can work in your favor, however, as those who use Stories are more likely to check them versus their newsfeed. New content is front loaded into a user’s Story feed, and because of their ephemeral nature, they won’t want to miss a single update.
Facebook has more than 150 million daily active Stories users, with engagement reaching 15 times that of traditional social sharing. It’s minimal effort with major potential to reach more of your audience.
5. Include Social Sharing Buttons on Your Website
Whether readers visit your blog via an email link or find you organically (every blogger’s dream!), make it easy for them to share your content on their own social media channels.
Social sharing buttons on your website are fairly standard in 2020, yet many bloggers still haven’t taken advantage of this feature. Think of them as direct links to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or other favorite platform: these buttons are embedded into each blog article. When a user wants to share it on their own page, they can click the button and post instantly, versus copying the link to your blog article and pasting it into a status update.
Sources show that simply asking users to share your content can increase your social distribution by up to 40%. And when you place your social sharing buttons right after your call to action to share, you’re making it easy on the reader to oblige.
If you don’t already have social share buttons enabled on your blog, AddThis offers a prime solution with no coding required.
6. Make Friends with Hashtags
Hashtags are metadata for Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. They tell the platform more about what your content is about so the platform can serve it to qualified readers.
You can use hashtags when you write a post or an article in LinkedIn, when you post a photo on Instagram, or when you tweet on Twitter.
LinkedIn will suggest hashtags that will make your content more searchable. On Twitter, you can click on a hashtag to see other tweets using that hashtag. You can also follow specific hashtags to see what’s trending around those terms, which may help to guide your content creation strategy.
When used correctly, you can increase your audience reach, which in turn can spur greater engagement and website traffic.
Check out my guide on how to develop an expert content distribution strategy to give your content the attention it deserves.
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