Looking for a way to attract more readers to your blog?
Social media is the perfect platform for doing this, allowing you to keep existing readers updated on new content whilst also enticing brand new readers.
Here are a few tips for using social media to boost your blog.
Choose the right channels
It’s possible to use every social media platform out there, but some are going to be more effective than others depending on the content of your blog.
If you run a style blog or a travel blog and you often take photographs, Instagram may come in handy.
However, if you rarely ever use photographs on your blog, this might not be a useful platform.
Similarly, LinkedIn could be a great platform if you own a business blog, but may not be as useful for promoting a personal blog.
Facebook and Twitter are the most versatile and it’s worth setting up pages on these platforms no matter the content of your blog.
Let your friends know
Once you’ve set up social media pages, it could be worth inviting all your friends to follow you.
This will help you to build an initial following that will help your blog to look popular and credible.
The likes of Facebook will usually encourage you to invite your friends when setting up a page.
Use social media plugins on your blog
Social media plugins can allow people visiting your blog to easily follow you on social media with a click of a button.
This can be great for turning people who stumble across your blog into loyal readers.
You can find embed codes for these plug-ins online.
Post at key times
When sharing blog content to social media, you should consider the timing. By posting at key times, you can reach out to more social media users.
Peak times for users vary from each platform – there are free tools out there that can help you find stats, so if you want to know when is the best time to post on Instagram, you can do so.
It’s worth also considering the nature of your blog. If you own a business blog, you’ll likely to attract most readers during work hours, so it’s worth posting on weekdays between nine and five.
Repost old content
On top of sharing new blog content to social media, you can also share old content.
Try to keep this old content relevant – if you’re sharing a post on ‘saving money on Christmas’ you’re best reposting this every year around Christmas time rather than in the summer when it will just look odd.
Similarly, there could be current news events that relate to an old blog post you wrote, and reposting your old content could help you to join in the conversation.
Make use of hashtags
Hashtags are a great tool for attracting brand new readers.
They allow you to categorise your posts to attract new readers – if you’ve just written a post on ‘reasons to get a pet cat’ adding #cats to your post will attract any social media users searching for cats.
Twitter and Instagram are the best platforms to use hashtags.
