How to Use Social Media to Make Your Blog Work Harder

31 Guaranteed Ways to NOT Create a Successful Blog

Got a new product coming out soon? Tease it a few times before you introduce it at a specific time on your accounts. If your company is hosting a conference, highlight individual presenters via social media the weeks before registration goes live. You could also try hosting a contest or a giveaway.

10 ways to increase your organic reach on social media

People need a reason to subscribe to your site. Obviously, copying everything your competition is posting is bad business. Live the laptop lifestyle and make money online? Instead, make real connections with your audience by producing high-quality content that has value. All they're doing is taking headlines that were written in the '50s and replacing old subjects with new ones. That means email experts and ask them questions.

We all love the idea of getting something for nothing. One popular contest strategy is to give people extra entries in exchange for tagging a friend, who may end up following you. Check out a few more tips here.

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Be sure to take advantage of the polls functions on Instagram and Facebook. They offer quick and painless ways to get into the minds of your customers. Or flat out ask a question in one of your posts. You can also get help from your fans.

Growing Your Blog: What Should You Work on FIRST?

Gently encourage the people who already love your business to make it a point of discussion on social media. The easiest way to do this is to make your website effortlessly shareable. You can use the Social Bookmarks or Shareaholic plugin for WordPress to add one-click share buttons for a variety of different social media sites to each post and page. Since images improve shares, you can also use a plugin like WP Facebook Open Graph Protocol to ensure that your posts automatically include a featured image when posted on Facebook.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Obviously, copying everything your competition is posting is bad business. But looking at other accounts can also spark creativity. Ask yourself these things about your competitors — and other top brands on social media. What hashtags are they using? What kinds of posts are generating lots of comments or shares?

Some social media are harder to crack than others, but they all come with rewards

Last week's post was all about increasing traffic to your social media from your So I work harder to get people to like posts or share posts so it grows that number . Then as you start to blog more you will have more in your arsenal to use. One great way to do this is to share your content on social media more than once. Immediately after publishing a new blog post, we promote that post on social media. How do you use social media? . important to monitor your results to make sure the changes you make to your social publishing schedule actually work.

What pins are getting lots of saves? You can also look at the people who are interacting the most with your competitors — and follow those people too. They may even like you back. Brainstorm with key people to conceptualize the image you want to present, but keep in mind that social media is all about fun. To get your creative juices flowing, consider these ideas and read the success stories of some other bigger businesses. That guy who wears flip-flops year round? The woman who brings in a new scented candle each month for her desk?

Who was your first customer? Who was your last? Who comes to your store every day at 2: You know the main ones: Halloween, April Fools, Christmas, etc. Creating a simply-designed quote or a meme is another way to connect with your audience. Including links on some social media platforms can be a little trickier than others. Instagram, for example, relegates links to bios and stories , and Snapchat has only recently allowed clickable URLs. But the extra seconds that it takes will pay off in the long run.

Sharing discount codes or free shipping for followers will keep them bonded to your business. Forbes reported that 72 percent of Millennials search for a coupon before making an online purchase.

Another survey said 71 percent of consumers follow specific brands on social media with the purpose of getting coupons. Influencers — the lifestyle accounts with large social media circles — live up to their title, and most thrive off of collaborations too.

A few steps can turn your blog into a successful online business

Here are more details on what to expect if you dabble in influencer marketing. We know, we know. But hear it out. Chances are these ads will go much further than any email newsletter will. The ads can be targeted, and these platforms offer a variety of pricing options. Check out this detailed social media advertising guide — broken down by platform — complete with steps on how to buy and create your ads. Enjoy the creative outlet and the ability to connect with your customers in a whole new way.

There will be a little rush when you get that first retweet, guaranteed. Emily Edmonds has written for DreamHost since Written by Emily Edmonds. Plan Everything Although many people are attached to their phones, they are hesitant to actually use them for calling a stranger. Be Pretty Gone are the days in which you can use boring or low-quality pictures. Write Killer Captions As important as it is to have good images, a strong caption will take your photo to the next level. Always Proofread Reading your captions slowly and out loud will catch a lot of embarrassing typos.

Harness Hashtags Who would have guessed that the symbol formerly known as the pound sign would have a mid-life crisis and rebrand itself as a hashtag? Use popular hashtags to garner a broader interest.

10 Easy Social Media Tips for Your Hard-Working Small Business

The most-popular hashtags are bowtie, followed obviously by bowties. Scroll down, and bowtiesarecool, bowtietuesday, and bowtieready are other top options. Using all these hashtags will help you reach people who are obsessed with this form of neckwear. It means quote experts and organize the quotes into an amazing piece of work. It means perform your own tests so that you can speak from personal experience, and cite your own data to prove it. It means open up a book, magazine, or peer-reviewed journal.

It means mining every source you have for the most surprising, counter-intuitive, shocking pieces of information and discarding the rest. Now take your research, drop quotes into their respective subheadings, and paste a link or a citation so that you know the source. People wonder how it is I can get content into sites like Moz, Copyblogger, and Venturebeat.

The answer is always the same. I write the blog post most people would write, except I add world-class examples, scientific studies, anecdotes, and personal experience. There are a lot of other things I do, but that's the one that's responsible for most of the results. People who can't write try way too hard to make their writing sound good. Very few bloggers or novelists, for that matter are successful because their language is so amazing that people can't turn away. Instead, they worry about suspense, research, emotional impact, and the story they're trying to tell.

They worry about having personality and keeping readers entertained. Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Talk directly to your reader. Yes, I advise spicing things up by replacing boring verbs with colorful ones, and yes, the active voice tends to be better than the passive one. But, in general, you should focus primarily on having personality and having fun.

Here's the big one. I'm seeing more and more inbound marketers advocate a "build it and they will come" approach to blogging. That very rarely works. Don't get me wrong. If you've already built up some powerful domain authority, you'll be able to earn some decent traffic just by chasing the right keywords. Still, in order to get to that stage, a lot of promotion has to happen beforehand.

It should go without saying in this day and age that guest posts play a big part in that. I advocate going after guest posts on the top blogs in your industry. It's not that you need those kinds of links in order to see any kind of ranking boost. Instead, I simply don't believe you've reached the quality of content you need in order to be successful until you can win those kinds of guest posts. Listen to feedback and take it seriously whenever you come across it.

You'll need the advice. Don't allow yourself to get offended.

2. Write your subheadings

Guest posts on top tier blogs are powerful for many reasons. The referral traffic can be a great source of natural links for your site in addition to the primary link. The exposure is a great opportunity to make a branding impression so that audiences will be more comfortable the next time they come across your name. You can also propagate through social networks in a way that isn't possible when you post on your own site. In addition to guest posts, I still believe in outreach, building relationships, and even outright asking for inclusion in a list of resources.

Paid links, as long as they are no-follow, and advertisements can also be a good way to build up a list of subscribers. If you're doing outreach and the like on a large scale, I'd also advise investing in project management software like WorkZone. It's amazing just how fast projects can spiral out of control without planning. Being a great blogger doesn't come down to being a great writer. It's about research, understanding and entertaining your audience, being yourself, and being transparent.

So long as you're also willing to promote it, it's hard not to succeed as long as you keep putting in the work. Follow Pratik Dholakiya on Twitter. The must-read news, updates, and insights into all things social media marketing. Author By Pratik Dholakiya dholakiyapratik. Share it post share tweet.