Choosing the Right Social Media for Your Blog
When it comes to choosing the right social media for your blog, there are two things you need to define: your target market and your social media goals. That gives you focus to create and share content exactly where your readers are spending time.
Define your target market. Who do you want to read your blog? Who do you want to buy your product or service?
EVERYONE is NOT your target market. Once you get clear, you can focus your social media efforts based on that demographic or interest group.
In their simplest form, there are three primary social media goals:
- Find your target market.
- Engage your target market my creating and sharing relevant, useful content.*
- Provide opportunities for engagement.
A secondary social media goal is to use social media for lead generation and sales. Ideally, leads and sales happen organically as you’re building trust with your online community. That’s not to say using ads to promote products and services is a no-no; only that sales shouldn’t be the primary goal.
*You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to content. If you see content that is useful to your community and couldn’t create a better version, share the content. If you think you could create something better, create a better version and share that.
LinkedIn: What used to be a resume and job seeker website has become a social and publishing platform for corporate types as well as entrepreneurs. Not only can Google find your profile, your LinkedIn community can find and connect with you using keywords. That makes it especially important to keep your profile up to date. Pretty cool if you’re looking to connect with people in a particular industry or at a particular company.
My favorite feature? LinkedIn Publishing. Unless you’re in a visual business, you should probably be publishing on LinkedIn. Be careful not to publish the exact same content in two places. (Publish on your blog and the exact same post on LinkedIn, for example) Google frowns upon it.
Facebook: Gone are the days of paying for likes on your business page. While it is still important to share relevant content on pages, the real interaction is happening in private groups. Check out my group Business Blogging Badass and experience for yourself.
Twitter: I LOVE Twitter for networking and research. I’ve met some of my best business friends through Twitter. When I attend events, I follow the event hashtag, make a connection, and then meet in real life. I’ve gotten referrals for business through Twitter contacts. When I am researching a topic or looking for the latest news, I check Twitter, often before a newsfeed or Google. I find the most up to date information is here.
Pinterest and Instagram: If your business or blog are visual (graphic designer, website designer, photographer, artisan, etc.), I recommend Pinterest and/or Instagram. Because I am more written than visual, my strategy is to have a presence on these sites but no dedicated time for posting; it just happens when it happens. That could change in the future but for now that’s how I use these sites.
Bottom line is that you don’t need to be on every social media site every day if you know your target market and define your social media goals. Create kickass content and share where your readers are spending time.
If you’re not sure which social media sites are right for you, call me at 480-206-6452 or email [email protected] to schedule a Content Strategy Session today.
