Social Media: how to chose the right one for your blog
Promoting yourself on social networks is a necessary step for any blog. In addition to taking care of SEO specs, posting what you just uploaded to your blog will help more people find out about your content. Building a solid following base in social media apps can help you get a steady flow of traffic to your website. However, the most used social networks in 2021 are very diverse, each requires different ways of communicating Which is the best for your blog? To decide you have to know, find out what you can not fail to promote your blog on social networks.
What do we have to consider?
Before deciding which social networks we want to use to promote our blog it is important to have some things in mind. It is not necessary to be on all social networks. Keeping those accounts takes time, so it’s important to decide which ones we can make the most of. In this way, we efficiently use social media apps to only those that benefit us.
When we are deciding which social networks we want to have for our blog we could get carried away with having those that are more popular but not always recommended. Our audience may not use the network we’re working on. That’s the first step, knowing which social networks our special audience uses. Maybe they’re teenagers who have stopped using Facebook, so it’s not worth taking the time to heal a profile.
On the other hand, it is very important to keep in mind our brand. What is the content of our blog? What distinguishes it? If it is a blog about makeup, it will be important the visual elements, a certain aesthetics… On the contrary, if it’s an educational blog, yes the images can be very important, but there will be other elements, such as a structure that makes it easy to learn from the lessons you upload.
Why is it important to take our brand into account? because it will have to be adapted to the social media application that we want to use. Going back to the previous example: for the makeup blog it might be a good idea to make a fast TikTok video testing a product, but for the educational one it would be better a more extensive YouTube tutorial. It does not mean that it is impossible to make other types of content or that there are unsuitable blogs to a social network, no, but what we want is that our blog fits well to the social media apps that we are using.
Therefore it is important to know what the social networks were made for. If you want to know more about this, I recommend reading: What Types of Social Networks Exist? There you will learn more about the types of social networks and why some types work differently from others.
Then learn more about the type of content you can create in some of the most popular social media apps, their advantages, and disadvantages. This way, you can decide which one is best suited to your blog content.
Almost everyone has Facebook. It’s a very versatile social network. You don’t have to have a predetermined purpose to use it, you share your interests and you’re done. Therefore, Facebook allows a wide variety of content on its platform, from text posts, videos, photos… To organize all this content, this application has needed to be made from different sections.
For example, the photographs and images are organized in the profiles through albums, and in each profile, there is a section of “I like”. There are also specific tabs, such as Facebook Watch for videos and MarketPlace for sales publications. Thus, although it is very varied it makes accessible to users what they are looking for. In turn, it is not the same to have a personal profile as a business. In the staff, you can change the privacy to have control over who sees what is shared, while in the business, the information is organized so that visitors know the basics of the business as soon as they enter the profile.
This would be the type of profile you would create for your blog. It doesn’t mean you can’t share from your profile, but it’s always better to have this other guy. Thus you can give a more professional image in addition to accessing the characteristics of this type of profile, which are beneficial to promote content. Among those are ad campaigns and in which a post is powered, these can help you gain new followers.
Something not so good about Facebook is that many young people no longer actively use it, they can have an account and not necessarily use it. Facebook refuses to become obsolete and that’s why it is constantly updated bringing news to the table. However, time does its thing and it could be that you’re losing an audience if it’s the only social media app you use. One strategy is to create content for other types of social networks and reuse it by posting it on Facebook, so you will benefit from the variety of content that this network allows.
This is another dominant social network. Instagram has been on Facebook since 2012 and has filled the social network with new features that expand its possibilities. Originally Instagram was a social network for sharing photos but now they are also shared, short videos (Reels), photos and videos that disappear after 24hrs (Stories), live videos, you can save items in galleries as well as make sales.
This diversification does not stop making Instagram a very visual social network. Photos are still the main item you find at the beginning and what most people see during the day. In turn, the profiles are grid to show the images that are uploaded. Countless times brands have used this format to create a distinctive profile aesthetic or to create a kind of “spectacular” made from individual photos. Creative possibilities on Instagram are wide.
Instagram has turned out to be an excellent choice for online stores. Because of its visual character, it is easy to display products. However, although captions with hashtags are of the utmost importance, not many people stop to read when it comes to a long text. therefore it is appropriate to limit the text. If your blog is about something difficult to show in photographs, you can create images with text fragments or even infographics.
As with Facebook, you can leverage the content you create for other social networks to post a rich variety of content. For example, if you’re going to give TikTok more strength, you can also publish them as Reels. That will save you time on social media maintenance.
This social network has quite varied users, from teenagers to adults, businesses, or celebrities… It is a network where everyone shares their ideas, news, and news in a hyper-short text format with hashtags to ensure their visibility and relevance on the right topics.
Twitter is a quite controversial social network because many times you share snippets of news without context. But this can be used in favor of blogging, you can share an excerpt of what you’ve written or the most controversial idea you’re dealing with in your text to draw attention to open the blog. The point is to write something more tempting and attractive than controversial, so you risk less not going to your site.
Twitter is perhaps best for your followers to share quotes from your blog. Quotes from blogs can become very popular. In general, in this application people like short content and sound good, “quotable quotes” as who says. So if you can highlight shocking snippets on your blog, you could encourage your readers to share them.
On the other hand, many small businesses are pleased just to have Facebook to Instagram. It’s quite content for a small business. The same can happen with blogs. But it’s also good to check what’s being said on Twitter about you. Checking for comments or posts that allude to you can help you measure what impression you’re making on your audience.
YouTube
Maybe many use YouTube as a means of entertainment, but the truth is that by its characteristics it is a social network of content. This type of social media application is characterized by users contributing content to the network and anyone can contribute. YouTube also has a tab for the community in which creators can communicate with their followers, in addition to the comments section and voting system “I like” and “I don’t like”. This generates a feedback loop between creators and viewers.
YouTube is not an easy-to-use social network for creators. In the first place, you should have some knowledge about video production and editing, not to mention that you should have some facility to talk in front of the camera. On the other hand, it is a very competitive space, it is not easy to appear between searches and will require as much SEO work as the blog itself.
On the other hand, videos are very popular with search engines. Therefore, if you make videos for YouTube, it’s worth republishing them on your site. So, you may not be the first choice on YouTube, but your page could rise to the search results ranking thanks to that kind of content.
One strategy for uploading content to YouTube is to make videos of blogs you already have written. That is, to convert the written text into a video script. It’s a way to reuse material you already have and improve your SEO as well as sponsor your blog on social media. Yes, it means more work than sharing an image and text on Facebook, but the gains you can make are pretty good.
Although it may seem incredible, Pinterest, after twelve years, is still maintained as a widely used social network. The format in which publications are stored in galleries is quite useful for users. You can save ideas, tutorials, recipes, photos… Of everything that catches your attention in boards created by themselves and that adapt to your specific needs. This has been so nice that Facebook and Instagram already have that feature.
Pinterest has been a very beneficial social network for people who have blogs. Through a striking image, they advertise what they can learn if they read their blog, include a link to the page and a brief description and that’s it. Part of the idea is that since the pin can be saved, those who add it to a board are interested in it and want to come back. Not only do you attract traffic that is going to stay a few seconds on the site but you create a relationship with frequent visitors.
On the other hand, with Pinterest, you have to take care of which image is used to sponsor the content. Just like with Twitter, you don’t want to say too much, an infographic will make users save your content but not open the link to your site. So you should get an image that attracts attention, with enough text of the topic but that calls to continue reading.
TikTok
This is the most recent application on the list and it has gained strength in the last two years. Because of the effects of the pandemic, many people who didn’t have an account made one to combat boredom. Since the algorithm captures user interests very quickly, it soon becomes one of the most addictive social media apps. That is why it is impossible to ignore the impact that TikTok can have to promote our blog.
Although TikTok is not per se divided into categories or sections, it is well known that the algorithm takes you to different “parts of TikTok”. For this reason, it is advisable to enhance the topic of your blog in the content you create for this social network. So the algorithm will know how to find your audience. The use of hashtags is important, also the choice of music and in general the style in which you record the video (if it is a challenge or trend at the moment).
There are several things to consider when producing content for TikTok. Again, consider your audience and your brand. Also that the tone of the app is usually very relaxed, so it is not suitable for all types of blogs. In addition, the links to your blog should be added to your profile, not in each video. One point that many people find desperate is the short form.
On the other hand, TikTok has the advantage that precisely because it is very relaxed and personal does not need too much editing. Much of the effects and editing tools are within the app. As I mentioned before, the content you make for this social network can be reused on other platforms.
Conclusions
It is not necessary to have an account for each existing social network. It’s enough to have some of the most popular ones, where your audience is, or those that are most beneficial to your brand and your type of content. This is what you should keep in mind when choosing the social media apps where you are going to promote your blog. Knowing the types of social media, the features of some of the most popular, and how the user experience is, can help you make the choice.
What platforms do you share or will you share your blog content on? Tell us in the comments.
Originally published at https://wordstylers.com on August 24, 2021.
