How to Use Social Media to Promote Traffic to Your Small Business Blog
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011 | by Guest Author | 
9 Comments |
If you want your small business to really capitalize on its social media presence, you should absolutely try using it to direct traffic to your blog. Integrating your social media marketing tools is essential to the process of “claiming” your brand on the internet — so what are you waiting for? Check out the following tips for success in using social media to prop up your blog:
Build Your Followers
It might seem like common sense, but it bears repeating: Before you start promoting your blog via social media networks, you should try to build a following, first. It’s an unfortunate truth called “social proof”: sometimes people won’t try your product — or engage with your service — unless others have tried it, blogged it, or followed it on Twitter. By having a number of subscribers to your Twitter or Facebook page, you offer “proof” to potential customers that your service is worth at least looking into. Don’t waste time promoting your blog to a few casual followers; try to build a firm fan base, first.
Tweet Your Updates
You can easily sync your company’s blog feed with your Twitter feed by tweaking the settings, a bit — but it might be better to pick and choose which blog posts you share on social networks, so as to avoid appearing “spammy.” If you have a particularly helpful or informative blog post, link to it on your pages with a short introductory summary or recommendation first. You can also ask friends to do this for you (use this tactic sparingly — you don’t want to alienate them by doing this.)
Publish on a Regular Basis
Delegate this task, if necessary: it’s a crucial step. You’ll lose blog readers and fans if you don’t publish something substantial fairly often. No one’s asking for a weekly tome on the state of your industry, but it’s a tried-and-tested fact that customers are drawn to good products.
…But Rely on Quality, Not Quantity
Remember this: You’ll get more followers and blog fans if you spend more time creating good, readable content than blindly sharing anything and everything you create on a whim. Offer advice to potential customers. Cite reliable sources — use quotes and statistics to back up your arguments. Establish yourself as a “thought-leader” in your field/industry, and you’ll easily direct social media followers over to your blog.
Use LinkedIn Answers
If you’re a LinkedIn user (and you should be!) make sure to use the “LinkedIn Answers” feature as much as possible. When someone asks a question, create a new blog post in response, and direct the user there. (Don’t do this too often or your post will be ignored; do it only when you have something really unique and substantial to contribute). Use relevant pictures/graphs in your blog, too – LinkedIn Answers won’t let you post them, so you have a valid excuse to link to your post if you do this.
Submit a Post on Digg or Reddit
Caution: this is an advanced move. Why? Because you’ll need to assess your surroundings before you start posting content here. Familiarize yourself with the FAQs and rules first. Users are hypersensitive to linkspam — and they know it when they see it. Again, make your content entertaining, engaging, and useful, and you won’t have any problems with this. It’s simple, really: users will spread your content widely if it’s good, and they’ll rave about it if it’s great.
Guest Author – Bryan Cochand is a freelance writer for Adobe. Adobe software, elearning software, and services, like web application development, revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information; anytime, anywhere, and through any medium.
9 Comments
January 5th, 2011 at 7:44 am
Fantastic post. I actually hadn’t thought about utilizing the linkedin answers for source material. Thanks for the information.
Arnold
April 24th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
You made a good point about Twitter by having a large following you are building credibility.
May 26th, 2011 at 8:36 pm
In addition to what this article says, it is good to note that search results are based on social value, especially with Google…if you notice when doing a search, you see more social media sites results listed–there is more of an emphasis on the social value of a businesses. The more socially-aware people are of your business, the better chance you have of being noticed. If small businesses need help with staying current and on top of things i.e. blogging, pr, etc. some find it useful to outsource. http://yourwebsitemarketingservice.com is a great example of a service small businesses can utilize for this sort of help.
June 29th, 2011 at 7:50 pm
Social media is very important in driving traffic today. I would also suggest using video as well as pictures.
August 18th, 2011 at 3:27 am
When you use social media for your business, it’s like putting a piece of cake in a swarm of ants. Your business is the cake and the potential customers are the ants.
September 9th, 2011 at 11:44 am
Great post, and great mention of the LinkedIn Answers. That is a great tool to drive traffic to your business, and one that businesses have not fully taken advantage of. I recently wrote a blog post about social media for small and big businesses. Check it out here:http://www.mysmn.com/big-biz-little-biz-a-return-to-the-mom-and-pop-shop/
December 30th, 2011 at 10:24 am
It is very necessary to promote your business in the social media as much as as any other now days because the internet is the future and you need to be with it. The trouble is that keeping a good social presence is time consuming and most serious business people just don’t have the time to spend. Magicbuz is a company that does SocioViral marketing for your business, making sure that your company is being talked about and represented all over the web. Their teams of conversationalists are able to reach out to the specific demographic you want as customers and bring you new clients through news articles, blogs, facebook, twitter and many more social media forums. Check them out on http://www.magicbuz.com
January 24th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
I really enjoy posting on Twitter and Facebook, and when writing blogs it’s definitely always about the quality! I’m very interested in learning more about digg and reddit, so I’ll look into those because they sound very useful. Great info!
May 17th, 2012 at 9:16 am
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