The success of a blog can be judged on different aspects, but engagement will be a dominant factor in achieving the desired outcome. Using social media marketing to promote your blog can be highly effective, and your ‘followers’ or ‘likes’ should be considered as important metrics.
However, ensuring that you truly engage with these people, across all platforms, is equally important and often overlooked.
Seth Godin is widely viewed as an arbiter on marketing issues, he has repeatedly referenced Kevin Kelly’s ‘1000 True Fans’ article. Kelly’s principal message is that a ‘true’ fan is of greater value than a lesser fan, and that engagement helps nurture ‘true’ fans. He states that:
‘The genius of the True Fan model is that the fans are able to move an artist away from the edges of the long tail to a degree larger than their numbers indicate.’
His article focuses on upcoming artists aiming to sustain a living, but the methods can be applied to the development of any blog. If you’re dealing with larger numbers, or are representing a corporation, then you should still pay heed to these core values with the same sincerity.
1. Unique & varied social media content
Using Facebook or twitter to post links to your own articles will help drive traffic towards your site, no doubt. However, if this is your only social media activity then you have to question how original and engaging the page is. Readers may initially ‘like’ or ‘follow’ you, but if your page is essentially a glorified RSS feed then you may drive these same people away at a later date. Also remember that engagement leads to more followers/likes.
A good example of a successful commercial Facebook page is Oreo; unique video, images, and campaigns solely for their Facebook page present the user with a fresh experience. The user’s engagement and sharing of the content, will in turn increase the traffic to both your Facebook page and your blog. If you are representing a brand, don’t be afraid to show intelligence – ‘dumbing down’ to your audience can be portrayed as a ‘dumbing down’ of your brand. This is where Oreo excels; it doesn’t offer generic competitions, instead choosing to post relevant and humorous content.
If you run a personal blog you may not have the resources for a campaign on this scale, but at least adopt the principles and ensure you have some unique content.
Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/04/02/the-social-media-marketing-secrets-of-smart-savvy-bloggers/#YJuH5J5gkgCsdYrK.99