How to Improve Your Social Media Marketing With Blogging

#1: Share Your Blog Posts in Your Social Status Updates

Not sure what to post on your Facebook wall or Twitter profile? How about links to your blog posts?

The rule of thumb is to have a 80/20 split with 80% of your updates not self-promotional and 20% self-promotional. If you use the 20% self-promotional updates to share links to your blog content, you’ll give your followers something more valuable to read than a product or service sales page.

Notice how Social Media Examiner linked to their latest post in this Facebook update.

Why is sharing your blog content on your social media profiles a good thing? For starters, you’ll bring people from social media sites back to your blog.

Sharing your blog content on your social sites also helps you demonstrate your business’s knowledge in your industry. This positions you as an informational leader. Becoming known as an authority in your industry can lead to speaking and even publishing opportunities that will ultimately boost your business’s exposure—and your revenue generation.

Here are some best practices to follow.

In order to receive the best exposure for your content, you will want to determine when the majority of your audience is online. Buffer offers great analytics to track tweet statistics. And Facebook Insights can help you with timing your Facebook posts.

The advantage of Twitter is that you can reformat your tweets to share content with your Twitter updates multiple times.

For example, you can use the title of the post in the first update, create a variation of the title for a second update and then ask a question related to the post in the third update. This helps you reach your audience across multiple time zones.

If you want to get more engagement when you share your content, use different ways of posting your status updates.

For example, on Facebook, post a photo to your wall and link to your content in the text of the post, since photo posts tend to get higher engagement than posts with just a link in them. See what works best for your audience.

When you mention specific people, products or businesses in your blog content, be sure to mention them again in your social updates when you share your post on social media. You can use @usernames in tweets and tag relevant people on Facebook and Google+. This increases the likelihood that these people will also share your content with their audience, potentially increasing your business’s exposure with a new audience.

Mention people, products and businesses in social shares of your content.

#2: Make Social Sharing Effortless

A great way to drive even more traffic to your blog posts is to allow your audience to share content for you.

Why do you want visitors sharing your content? One of the best reasons is to gain social proof for the content your business publishes. You’ll also start to gain more readers and subscribers from followers of those who share your content.

Your content may even be featured in LinkedIn Today, LinkedIn’s news section based on blog content that has been shared often on LinkedIn.

The top story on LinkedIn Today for Marketing and Advertising.

Here are some best practices to follow.

The best way to encourage others to share your content is to include social sharing buttons on your blog, preferably at the top and bottom of your blog posts.

Plugins that can help you achieve this include Add This (multiple blogging platforms),Share This, Sociable (WordPress self-hosted) and Digg Digg.

Social Media Examiner uses Digg Digg for social sharing buttons.

Another great way to encourage sharing is to ask visitors to share your content. Consider it a great call to action to add to all of your posts. You can even include tweetable nuggets throughout your blog posts by using the Clicktotweet tool.

A tweetable quote using Clicktotweet on the Analyze Facebook Insights to see ad performance.

#3: Grow Your Social Followers Through Your Blogging

Do you want more Twitter followers, Facebook fans and Google+ followers? Blogging gives you a platform and provides opportunities where you can encourage readers to connect with you on social media.

Why do you want to build relevant followers through your blogging? These will be some of the best social followers for your business as they will be the ones most interested in your industry and in your content.

A relevant and targeted audience can ultimately turn into more leads and conversions for your business through social media. As you grow your targeted following on social media, you can also expect to receive more engagement when you share your content on your social profiles.

Here are some best practices to follow.

If you want to grow your Twitter following, be sure to use the official Twitter retweet button. This allows you to add your @username to the tweet and encourages people to follow your Twitter account after they tweet your posts.

Gain new Twitter followers when people tweet your content.

Include a call to action at the end of your posts to the effect of “If you enjoyed this post, please follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.” This also helps increase your social following. But only promote your main social media accounts. Giving too many options may lead people to choose not to follow any of them.

Since your business blog’s design will likely feature a sidebar, include follow buttons so visitors can easily follow you on the top social networks.

Social Media Examiner uses these social buttons in the blog sidebar to grow followers on Twitter and Google+.

Also, be sure to set up Google+ authorship on your blog. Your photo and Google+ profile will show up with content you author in Google’s search results, which could lead to more Google+ followers (and click-throughs back to your posts).

#4: Send Social Advertising Links to Your Blog Content

If you find that the social advertising you have pointing directly to your landing pages, product pages and service pages is not getting traffic, you may want to look at advertising links to your blog content instead. If your content is valuable enough and written toward your targeted customer base, you could generate conversions from the blog posts you advertise.

Market your blog posts through social advertising.

Why share blog content in your social advertising? People who are not familiar with your business are more likely to click on an informational link vs. links to a sales page.

If your goal is engagement, blog content typically gets more likes, comments and shares than sales pages. This will make your Promoted Posts and Sponsored Stories on Facebook more impressive. Facebook Ads in particular can also lead to boosting your number of fans on Facebook.

Here are some best practices to follow.

To create a great ad, start with a strong title, description and image from your blog post. Also try making variations of your ad (such as LinkedIn advertising allows) to test your audience’s response and engagement using different images, titles and descriptions for your blog posts.

To ensure that your ads are affecting your bottom line in a positive way, make sure to end each blog post with a strong call to action related to your products or services. This will give your ads more potential to lead to conversions and sales.

Then analyze the data from each social network’s advertising analytics, as well as your blog’s Google Analytics, to make sure your ads are receiving click-throughs, and that your blog content is turning visitors into conversions.

Analyze Facebook Insights to see ad performance.

In Conclusion

If you are not seeing the results you’d like with your social media marketing, employ some of these tips to integrate your blogging into your social media marketing tactics. Be sure to let us know how it works for your business.

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Better Leadership Through Social Media

Join a new online network? I'd love to!"

In 15 years of helping business, government and nonprofit leaders make strategic choices about digital technology, I've yet to hear an executive utter those words.

Sometimes that's due to the risks of public embarrassment or conflict that come with online engagement. Sometimes it's painful memories of previous tech projects that ran over budget and behind schedule. And sometimes it's because executives would rather interact face-to-face than keyboard-to-keyboard.

But always, I hear a common concern: How can I add another platform, task list or set of relationships to my already full plate?

Social media have only made that problem more acute. While blogging, Twitter and Facebook have brought new opportunities for conversation, knowledge gathering and relationship building, those opportunities may feel more daunting than dazzling to overloaded executives.

The solution is to stop looking at social media as another platform you have to learn—yet another responsibility—and start seeing it for what it can be instead: a personal toolbox for improving your practice of leadership.

Each tool and activity described below requires a certain investment of time to set up. But once it's part of your routine, it will repay you with insights into work and leadership, and with freed-up time. Start with one, so you can see the payoff before adding more setup jobs to your busy agenda. But do start.

Here are six ways you can use social media to enhance your leadership.

Create a Leadership Dashboard

Don't just monitor the Web for intelligence about your business and brand; mine it for ideas, news and research that will help you develop as a leader. Use iGoogle, Google Reader or an iPad aggregator like Flipboard to subscribe to a range of blogs, columnists and news searches that offer insights into new leadership models, profiles of high-functioning executives, academic research on leadership and summaries of the latest business books. Set aside 15 to 30 minutes a day to read the articles that speak to you, or make this your end-of-day reading for the homeward commute.

Stay Focused

For you and your team, social productivity, planning and visualization tools can keep your focus sharp and creative powers strong.

Mind-mapping tools like those at MindMeister.com can help you get organized by making a diagram of your priorities for the year or quarter. The diagram should make clear your areas of responsibility, and those of your team members. It should be a constant reminder of who needs to do what to reach your goals. Share it with your direct reports or closest teammates.

A diagram is a good starting point, but you also need to be sure everyone is doing their job. Project-collaboration tools like Basecamp make it easy to track each team member's tasks and progress. For those of you who get overwhelmed by a packed to-do list, try a tool like OneTask, which feeds you tasks one at a time.

Don't get so bogged down in details that you lose sight of the vision. To keep the team inspired, you can create an online vision board. Pinterest.com gives users a way to create galleries of images that remind everyone what they're working toward. Your gallery might include a picture of a crowded auditorium (representing the hoped-for size of your growing company) or headshots of Fortune 500 CEOs (the ones you're trying to acquire as clients). Let the whole team add images. It should be a collaborative effort, building a touchstone that refreshes energy and creativity in each of you.

Change Channels

If it's getting difficult to spot the urgent emails amid the accumulating CCs, FYIs and LOLs, escape the inbox by switching to Twitter as your preferred channel for high-priority or time-sensitive communications.

Set a Twitter account to follow all your direct reports, key clients and trusted colleagues (the ones who don't abuse your time and attention). Let these folks know the best way to reach you is via Twitter Direct Message, and set your smartphone so that Twitter Direct Messages (but not other kinds of tweets) show up in real time, just like a text message.

Reading and replying will be a lot faster when your correspondence is limited to 140 characters. And you can leave the job of clearing your email inbox to the beginning and/or end of the day. Instead of Twitter adding to your communications burden, it's now making the job easier.

Join a CEO-cial Network

As a business leader, the demands of building your brand, customer relationships and industry networks may require you to connect with a very large number of people on social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook—far too many to sustain meaningful connections with all of them. That's why you need to consciously build a CEO-cial network: a set of five to 15 respected and trusted executives, leaders and advisers whose knowledge, insight and loyalty will have a meaningful impact on your own professional capacity and performance.

Make a point of following that highly select group on all the social networks you use; create a separate private Twitter list, Google+ circle, and/or Facebook friend list that contains only these people.

You won't use those networks to consult with your advisers online, but rather to cement your personal, professional and intellectual relationships with each of these key colleagues.

Make this list of people the first thing you look at when you catch up on any of your social networks, so that you know what they are thinking about, reading, and dealing with in their own working lives.

You'll know who to reach out to when you have a specific challenge, and you'll be able to jump right into intense conversation because you are caught up on each other's personal and professional lives.

Build a Golf Course

If your mental paradigm of CEO regeneration looks like an afternoon on the golf course, it's time to bring that golf course to you. Find or build a social-media space that is purely relaxing and restorative—something you can enjoy in that miraculous five-minute gap between meetings.

It might be a lovingly curated gallery of your own photographs—a personal version of the Pinterest vision board—a blog where you review the latest wines, or a vicious game of Words With Friends. Unlike doing karate or playing the violin, your social-media escape will be something you can do anywhere, while wearing a business suit. All that matters is that it be genuine downtime, and an energy restorer rather than an energy drain.

Amplify Your Voice

Charismatic leadership is a tremendous asset for any company—but it also creates pressures to project your charisma online through a CEO blog, Twitter feed or YouTube channel. If your day is already more than full, never fear. Most of the material you'll need is already out there, waiting to be repurposed.

If you're constantly sending "read this!" emails to your inner circle or staff, start tweeting those links instead: The articles and posts you consider must-reads will be fascinating to your Twitter followers. Whenever you give a speech, get it recorded and posted to YouTube. Set up an internal blog where you post excerpts from the "job well done" emails you send throughout the week; your appreciation will mean even more when it's made public.


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Related articles

• Better Leadership Through Social Media
• Why Bother Monitoring Social Media? Part 2
• The ABC's of Converting Social Media Into Word-of-Mouth Marketing
• Top Reasons to Participate in Social Media?

Six Pinterest Benefits for Business Bloggers

The hype surrounding the latest social networking phenom, Pinterest, continues to grow daily and with each new member that joins, people are discovering new uses for this exciting posh site. Being that it is a site that focuses much more on visuals than words, Pinterest is obviously attracting more people who gravitate towards the aesthetic side of things, but that does not mean that it is a site that can only be used by a very specific and small range of people.

Business bloggers have recently started latching on to Pinterest, along with many other blog, site and online business owners who are starting to figure out how to use this site to their benefits. Here are six most obvious benefits of Pinterest for business bloggers.

1. Connect and develop relationships

Pinterest is a social site. It’s all about connecting, sharing and interacting with other pinners. If you disregard this fact, you are not only missing the point, but amazing business opportunities as well.  Create relevant pinboards and aim to provide useful information and great resources to your visitors. Reply to their comments, visit their boards and socialize with them. And if you think it is a waste of time, remember that people buy not from companies, but from people they like and trust.

2. Share Content 

Obviously, this is another venue for sharing your blog content. Pinterest is especially favorable for blogs with high quality imagery and graphics. So if you are creating and posting infographics and videos, or run a blog that is very visual, like a travel, cooking or fashion blog, then Pinterest is a custom made sharing platform for you. Handy tip: use the description field to provide useful information about the pictures or videos that you pin to your boards and add relevant tags like #quotes, #travel, #infographics (otherwise known as keywords!).

3. Increase visibility and build reputation 

Business professionals or freelancers blogging to attract more clients will benefit from increasing their visibility, not to mention designers, photographers, architects and illustrators. If you are in this line of business, then Pinterest can truly get you exposure. Share your work, offer insightful comments, pin advice, tips and useful resources from your respective fields of expertize, and position yourself as an expert in your niche.

4. Build backlinks

Each picture or graphic that you or your blog visitors pin and repin links back to the source (your blog or website), and the more pins and repins, the more link juice. To get many repins, first you need great visual content and secondly, followers. To increase the likelihood of getting many repins, grow your following. It all starts with sharing great content, reaching out, and building relationships.

5. Seek out blog post ideas

As a blogger, you constantly need inspiration for new blog posts. Even if you already tried Pinterest, you probably haven’t thought of this picture sharing site as a blog idea generator. But pictures that your potential blog subscribers and customers share can actually provide an excellent insight into their interests, needs and wishes. Pictures can actually reveal much more than words and cure your creativity drought. Simply explore pinboards around your blog topic and find yourself both refreshed and inspired to write.

6. Promote company or affiliate products

Pinterest is a simply amazing site for window shopping and therefore showcasing your products. Whether you are promoting the products from your e-shop or affiliate products, Pinterest presents itself as great opportunity. You can even put a price tag on your products by adding a US dollar price in the description of your pin. One great way to get free promotion and positive recommendations is when your customers pin your products on their “Products I love” board.

Once you get into the swing of things and start getting a feel for how Pinterest works and how people respond to content that is shared on it, more and more ideas will start to crop up on how Pinterest can be used to promote your blog or products. The best and most exciting thing about Pinterest is that the known uses for the site have just started scratching the surface of Pinterest’s potential.

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