Do you remember the days when our parents drank their morning coffee while reading the newspaper? Those newspapers had some news and articles, of course. But do you know what else those newspapers were filled with? Ads! When you needed a plumber, you checked your local listing in the newspaper or telephone book. If you wanted to know about local community events, you checked the newspaper.
Fast forward to the more modern times we are in today. Most people don’t read the newspaper like they used to. Instead, we drink our morning coffee and check our social media of choice. Most of us use multiple social media platforms. We keep in touch with friends and family through Facebook. We get inspired by beautiful pictures and influencers on Instagram. We share our thoughts and opinions on Twitter. We interact with businesses and potential clients on LinkedIn. And what woman (and a lot of men) don’t love to peruse Pinterest for ideas of the things we love?
Share Your Knowledge And Expertise
Now that we have established that most of the people we interact with in our lives are on social media, it makes sense that much of the way we do business involves social media. Let’s compare the days of yesterday to today.
Yesterday, people enjoyed reading articles in newspapers. People learned a lot about a wide variety of topics from reading these printed articles. Today, we are more of a digital environment and paperless. Today, our articles are called blogs! Whether your blog is used to promote your business or a hobbyist mommy-blogger, you share your knowledge and expertise with your readers. Your blog is like a window into your business or an invitation to get to know you and your business. So how do you promote your blog to attract more potential clients? If blog posts are our newspapers of today, social media are the ads of today. Social media is like word-of-mouth advertising, which can be the best way to get your blog and business noticed.
How To Use Social Media Cross-Promotion
When promoting your blog on social media, the main thing to remember is that you need to tailor your message to fit each social media platform. You talk differently to your friends on Facebook than you do to colleagues and peers on LinkedIn. Pinterest and Instagram use images as the primary way to attract people. Twitter is intended for very short and simple messages that are limited to 140 characters. Let’s take a look at the top five social media platforms and how to use them to promote your blog:
- Facebook – Facebook has a wide variety of ways to promote your blog. You can share it to your personal profile, Facebook business page, and groups you are in. Posts with images work best with Facebook. Be sure to use a bright and attractive picture, graphic, even a meme or gif to draw attention to the post. Put your blog post link in the text field along with a short blurb inviting your followers to read your blog. Facebook posts can be long, but most people only skim and do not want to read a longer post. Keeping the post short and simple is best. Only the first 480 characters are visible in the Facebook post, so anything longer than that will not be seen unless the reader clicks to “see more”.
- LinkedIn – LinkedIn also has a wide variety of ways to promote your blog. You can post it to your profile, your company and showcase pages, and groups. You can also republish your blog post on LinkedIn Pulse and SlideShare. Like Facebook, sharing your link with an image works best to draw your followers’ attention. The text should be engaging, encouraging your followers to comment or answer a question. LinkedIn only shows the first 150 characters, and then readers will have to click to “see more”.
- Instagram – Instagram is a little different in how you will need to post your blog. They use a unique square size for images, which is 1080 X 1080 pixels. If you are using a photo that is outside of that size, it will be cut off. You can fit up to 2,200 characters of text, but only the first three lines are displayed in the newsfeed. Hashtags are essential to Instagram. Many Instagram users don’t even bother with words, only a long list of hashtags for making your post searchable. Use keywords from your blog post as your hashtags and add as many hashtags as you want (up to 30). You will not be able to post your link to your blog in a clickable format within your Instagram post. Most people write in the text of the post “Link in my bio”. You can then add the URL to your blog post link in your profile, where it will be clickable. Even smarter is to use Instagram stories to promote your blog by including fun images, stickers, music, hashtags, and the ability to swipe up to take you to your blog link.
- Pinterest – The image is the most crucial part of your pin when using Pinterest. Write a brief description to show what your pin is about, and keep it to no more than 300 characters. You can use keywords as hashtags for Pinterest as well. Add your blog link to your pin description, which will allow users to click on the pin to take you to your website to read your blog. Add a call to action, inviting readers to repin, read more, learn more, etc.
- Twitter – Twitter uses hashtags and @ handles when you want to tag or give credit to another Twitter account. Include an image and links to get more retweets. Keep your text under 140 characters for the best results. Add up to four hashtags of your trending keywords.
Finally, whichever social media platform you are using to promote your blog, be sure to engage with your followers. Make a content strategy and be consistent with your social media posts and engagement. You will want to keep an eye on your posts if a follower comments or asks questions that you can answer to engage with them. Social media is all about being social and building relationships, which is the best way to promote your business.