7 powerful social media strategies to boost your blog

You have put in the hard work to get your content published and if you are like most people will share it across your social media channels. But is just sharing your posts the best way to get the most traction on social media given the work you have put into creating content?

Wouldn’t it be better if you could increase your visibility and create engagement with your audience regardless of whether you use paid or organic means?

Here are 7 must-use strategies you can dive into and implement to boost your blog’s social media marketing.

Get creative with visual media

According to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report 74% of social media marketers use visual assets in their social media marketing and 60% use video.

To give your blog posts the best chance consider adding the following types of visual media if you aren’t already –

• Add pinnable tall images (735px x 1102px)
• Add wide shareable images for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn (1200px x 628px)
• Craft captions to images that will spur discussion and conversation
• Add videos where appropriate.
• Share videos on YouTube

A social media scheduling tool like Blog2Social can also help with selecting appropriate images for each social media platform.

Buffer, for example, uses a variety of visual media including emojis to promote content on their Twitter account, as they did with this tweet –

Use compelling calls to action

Adding a compelling call to action is vital to keeping your audience engaged. Consider for example the following statistics:

• According to Unbounce more than 90% of visitors who read your headline also read your CTA copy.
• According to Adroll – adding CTAs to your Facebook page can increase the click-through rate by 285%.

Social media users are inundated with content and information so keep them from getting bored, and speak to their need for instant gratification by providing a call to action. Don’t just offer them access to a newsletter but instead things like coupons, email promotions, and on-location benefits.

Nandos in the UK made the most of final-year school students receiving their A-level results with this post on their Facebook page.

Evoke emotions from users but most importantly be honest

A study of over 1400 ads, identified that emotional content succeeded twice as much as non-emotional content. Content that evokes happiness is shared the most.

But research by SproutSocial found that while happiness and humor is good, what consumers want most from brands on social media is honesty. Being friendly and helpful were also sought after.

Jet Blue, for example, deals with customer service issues as transparently as they can with tweets like this –

Consider platform preferences

We are increasingly seeing shifts in the social media space where more platforms are beginning to have the same functions. However, a lot of these platforms have retained their unique culture despite a lot of crossover taking place.

For example, Facebook is still a casual place to hang out and post cute pictures enter into discussions with family and friends etc. Twitter, on the other hand, lends itself to news and character-limited comments and opinions.

Your audience too has platform preferences and with each platform a set of expectations based on the platform and your brand. For example, showing off your personality on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are considered acceptable but not so much on LinkedIn according to research.

So, take the time to craft unique messages for each platform, like Whole Foods does on their Facebook page with information, contests, offers and news around their products.

Drive retweets, shares, and likes

To boost your blog posts it is important to share it on social media.

But is that enough? What makes for successful posts on social media?

If the purpose is to gain increased visibility then those posts should have plenty of shares and or likes and have people comment on it.

However, just posting your blog posts won’t achieve the visibility you need. Asking people to “reshare it” also won’t give you what you are after. So instead post relevant content that promotes discussion or offers incentives. Then ask people for platform-specific calls to action.

For example:

• On Facebook users could vote with emojis
• On Instagram people could share with hashtags or tag someone else who would appreciate the content
• On Twitter ask for brief opinions

Start discussions that add value

No matter what niche or industry you are in, conversation or discussion with your audience is what will bring the biggest difference to your business. The best place to start with discussions is to listen. It can be a very useful way of gathering candid feedback. You don’t always have to ask direct questions to get answers. Consider using polls on social media for example.

According to the Pew Research Centre, 62% of adults in the U.S get news via social media. So, consider using news related to your niche to fill gaps in your social media schedule. The SproutSocial study shows similar trends as well.

In fact, the study shows that most people want to engage with brands online.

According to the study –

68% of consumers want brands to participate in conversations they’re mentioned in, and 83% want brands to respond to them. This response percentage jumps 10% when you look at Millennials–proving that actions speak louder than laughs.

So consider engaging your audience in the following ways:

•  Ask them a question around recent industry related news
• Start a debate
• Thank new followers and personalize your responses
• Most importantly monitor your brand engagement.

Mention people

It only seems natural to mention people on social media. After all social media was designed to help people interact in a social manner. By mentioning people, you can only amplify your social media posts depending on who you know.

However, it doesn’t just have to celebrities, charities or social media stars that are worthy of mentions. According to a study by Mention 91% of mentions come from people with fewer than 500 followers. Only 6% of them were of a negative nature. Which means the rest are from potential advocates for your brand.

So, if you were to mention people in your posts fewer than 1 out of 10 will come from a power user. While you may want to prioritize replies to power users. Replying to even those with fewer followers will engage them, most of whom will end up talking about you.

Conclusion

You don’t create content for the sake of creating content. You do it to educate and grow your audience. Sure tools can help but using them in ways that boost your social media marketing will help build connections with your audience and brand for the longer term.

Have a success story with your social media marketing? We’d love to hear about it in the comments. Or was it a complete failure? If so, tell us what you learned from it!