by Emily Gilbride
To kick off our first blog post of 2022 we’ll look into how you can use your social media to promote your own in-house writing.
Writing blogs on your website and having social media accounts are essential in creating an online presence for your business. They are both powerful tools which can help analyse audience engagement and communicate with them. Having a separation between your social media and blogging efforts will mean you’re not benefitting from their full potential impact.
Joining these two channels will not only help you increase traffic to your website but also improve overall engagement with your blogs, which is arguably even more important. Not forgetting it will allow you to develop the quality of your content. Knowing how to use your social media to promote your blog will enable you to build a community around it.
Cross-Promotion
To effectively cross-promote your blog posts, you can’t simply broadcast the same message on each social media channel; you need to tailor your message to fit each platform and audience.
For example, if you are promoting your blog post on Twitter and LinkedIn the tone and size of your post will be different for both networks. On Twitter you are limited to 140 characters, so you have to keep your message short and simple. On LinkedIn you will have more room to discuss the content of your blog
Everyone is aware of the importance of social share buttons. But are you aware users are much more likely to share some useful points from your article rather than the whole article? To promote your blog post let your content simply promote itself, it’s always good to have ‘postable’ quotations in your posts.
Having quotes which your readers can include from your blog means that their posts about it will be a lot more engaging and likely to perform better, meaning that your content will reach wider audiences.
We would recommend having some short and snappy sentences in your content. It’s good to get into the habit of trying to write at least one or two “quotable” phrases for each blog post. This will increase your shares and not only that, people love a good quote to post on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Not only are social media accounts useful for sharing your recent blog posts but they should also become channels where you can talk to your audience. No analytics and statistics will tell you more about your followers than your followers themselves.
You should view both your social media and blog as a way to interact with your audiences through the comments section. Having a disconnect between the two will lead to your common goal of ‘higher engagement’ to fall through the cracks.
Last but not least you need to tailor your posts to each network and audience. Usually, you don’t have to make major changes; a slight difference in tone can boost engagement. To find out more about social media engagement check out our blog posts on engagement for a more insightful rundown and find some helpful tricks to get you started.
Produce quality content
As mentioned above, using your social media platforms to promote your blog will improve the quality of your content. High quality, original content is absolutely essential to building a consistent blog following. It will allow you to have direct contact with your readers and listen to any requests or queries they have. Simply, write for your readers and not for yourself.
Although blog comments can provide insight into your audience’s thoughts on the topic you’ve written about, they are often just empty (as very few people express their opinion there) or contain too much spam.
Your social media platforms can encourage online discussions between you and your audience. It will provide the perfect place for your followers to ask questions, provide feedback or even suggest any blog titles they would like to see.
Ultimately, using your social media can ensure you write valuable content that serves the specific needs of your readers. It will let your content users know that your blog is solid and a reliable source of information.
Tweet it on Twitter
Twitter was the first social network to introduce hashtags and @ handles for better search and networking options. The platform started off with a 140-character limit. In 2017, this changed to give people a little more space. Although Twitter has stretched its character limit, it remains at its core a short message service.
To get more retweets, be sure to include images and links. It is known that tweets with fewer than 140 characters receive the most engagement!
Leave a link on LinkedIn
Sharing your blog post with an image and link works best on LinkedIn. Make your text personal and engaging. Ask questions or encourage readers to interact with your content. By doing this it can create an online discussion and even, perhaps, attract more traffic to your website.
Share your blog post once for the initial promotion when it goes live. Repeat sharing your blog once a week, around promoting your new content, then reduce that to every fortnight on your LinkedIn page.
Post your blog content to your company page depending when your content goes live. It’s been noted that the best time to post on LinkedIn is 9:00 am on Tuesday and Wednesdays. On every other day, between 8-11 am appears to be the optimal time to post. Share your blog content in appropriate groups, but use different text depending on the group and target audience, and post on different days and times.
Another thing to consider is sharing snippets of your post in your LinkedIn post. LinkedIn is a platform that’s a little more friendly to long-form content that would resemble your original blog post.
When doing this, make sure that the meaning of your text is clear. Preface it with a few sentences explaining what you’re about to discuss, if you need to. Try to keep it to about 150 words or less or you will risk losing readers.
Looking to the future
We hope this blog post has highlighted the importance of using social media to promote your blog. Understanding your audience’s differentiating tones on multiple platforms will increase readership of your content. Nevertheless, if you push out the same messaging on multiple channels you’ll find that you have missed opportunities for outreach and engagement.
What do you think? Do you promote your blog posts on multiple social media channels? How do you alter your posts for each platform and audience? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
