Blogs are only as good as the number of people who are visiting it and reading the contents. You may toil hard have the best of contents uploaded to your blog, but it would all be a waste of time and effort unless it is widely read and shared by the target audience. After writing, blog promotion is the single biggest challenge facing bloggers. Traditionally, email has been one of the very popular and effective routes of blog promotion, however, the advent of numerous social media platforms have made it relatively easier for bloggers to reach out to large numbers of readers in the quickest possible time. Since there are many social media platforms, it is necessary to be more than a little choosy in deciding the best and most effective platforms to be active on. The three social media sites that can best drive traffic to your blog:
Originally intended to be a student hangout, Facebook has taken an early and massive lead in the social media sweepstakes and refuses to move from its numero uno position despite intense competition from all quarters. You start out with a personal profile and start building a circle of friends, who also need to be Facebook members. You can post text and photo content, as well as video files, and tag your friends who are likely to be interested. Activity is limited to the circle of friends; however, the facility of a Fan Page permits complete strangers to like your posts. Links to the blog post can be shared on Facebook, either on the Status or Group or even both. Adding a short description about the link helps to promote the post. Facebook now offers the facility of advertising your blog.
Even though the 140-character limit of the tweet may appear restrictive, the advantage of using Twitter is that your Tweets can be seen by all using the popular social media platform, regardless of whether they are followers or not and it is also not necessary to reciprocate those following you by following them, though it is actually good manners. The biggest contribution by Twitter is perhaps the concept of the hashtag, which allows classification of Tweets on similar topics. It is possible to retweet to share tweets you like or even save them by an action called Favoriting. Twitter has extended its capabilities beyond text to include images and videos. Due to the fleeting nature of tweets, it is possible to keep on tweeting on the same subject without boring people out of their minds because it is highly unlikely that they have seen the earlier tweets though changing the words is a good idea. To get the best exposure on one of the top social networking sites for promoting blogs, you need to pay attention to timing and scheduling of your tweets. Several scheduling tools are available that allow you to post tweets at the most optimum times for your audiences around the globe.
LinkedIn is a social media site that is dedicated to professionals who are interested in expanding their reach, sharing domain knowledge, networking with peers, seeking career advancements etc. Just like Facebook, hyperlinked content may be liked, commented or shared by your connections. You can seek out connections by sending out invites that are classified according to how you know the person being invited. Spamming is frowned upon and you are likely to be penalized. LinkedIn users are provided a profile page for creating an online resume or even an advertisement. You can endorse the skills of a connection and also join up with various groups and post there without being required to be connected to each member of the group.
Conclusion
As a busy blogger, you will never have the time to market your blog across all the social media channels, even though it may be highly desirable. When time is against you, you need to focus on the platforms that are likely to give you the maximum returns, and Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are definitely the very best. However, if you blog on subjects that are favored by certain other social media platforms, you should definitely become a member there too.
Author bio: Megan Hayward is a social media marketing consultant with extensive experience of advising players in the lifestyle sector. An enthusiastic blogger about online marketing, she publishes an annual survey of the top social networking sites for promoting blogs.