7 Ways to Make Social Media Your Blog's Best Friend

When your marketing strategy is centered around inbound lead generation, your blog is in the center of it all. As such, you need to drive traffic by promoting your blog. An obvious place to start is with social media.  Here are seven simple ways to make social media drive traffic to your blog.

Here’s how to do it right.

1. Write and schedule social media updates when you write and schedule blog posts.

While your mind is still fresh and focused on the content of each blog post, craft the status updates you will use for promoting that post on social media, then schedule it all with software such as HubSpot or HootSuite. Remember that the half-life of a social media update is short — only about 2.8 hours on Twitter and 3.2 hours on Facebook — so plan to promote each post more than once. (Click to Tweet!)   

Schedule updates for the day the blog post is released, the day after, one week later, and even a month later. Remember that not all of your followers see every update, especially as some social media platforms push business users toward paid updates with algorithms that reduce how often followers see updates (we’re looking at you, Facebook).

2. Go back and promote older posts with great response rates.

While your established schedule for promoting new blog posts on social media may end after a month or two, you can still give old posts new life. Review your metrics to see which blog posts over the last year, or even two, have the highest engagement rates or have led to the most conversions and sales. If they are still relevant, all you need to do is write a few status updates for your social media channels and drum up new interest from followers who may have missed it the first time around.

3. Make your blog posts — and status updates — shareable.

One of the five characteristics of great content is offering something that makes readers want to share it. Why do people share things?

• 61 percent share things because they are interesting.

• 43 percent share things that are funny or entertaining.

• 29 percent share content that is unique.

   

So why is shared content so important? Clicks from shared content are five times more likely to result in a purchase. (Click to Tweet!)   

Create content and write social media updates that are interesting, funny and unique.

4. Use enticing images.

HubSpot has found that Facebook posts with images are shared four times as often as text-only updates. On Twitter, tweets that include an image are shared 1.5 times as often.

A wide range of stock images are available from sites such as fotalia and Gillham Studios.

5. Engage your followers.

Use your social media not only to promote your blog posts, but also to engage with your followers in conversations. Write status updates that invite them to comment on the topic of your blog post and share their own insights.

Make your social media accounts and your blog posts a two-way conversation.

6. Leverage hashtags and newsjacking opportunities.

If your blog post is relevant to current events or fits well with established hashtag campaigns, don’t overlook the opportunity to have it grouped with those trending news stories. Use established social media conventions such as #TBT on a recycled post, or add a hashtag for a product your blog post addresses, such as #android if you are discussing an app for the mobile operating system.

Create your own hashtags for interactive campaigns such as contests that you want your followers to participate in and share.

7. Include blog links in profiles and descriptions.

It seems simple, but something that is easy to overlook is the simple inclusion of a link from your social media profile back to your blog. Be sure that the “About” section of your Facebook profile includes a link, as well as your LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ profiles.

Each time you pin one of your blog post images to your Pinterest account, be sure to include a link in the description, making it easy for those who view the pin to go directly to the complete blog post.

Using these tactics can help you expand your blog’s reach, attracting more visitors to your website where they can be converted into leads, the goal of inbound marketing. Find more than a dozen other ways to extend your blog’s reach in our ebook Grow and Scale Your Business Blog.