There are many ways in which you can use social media in your blogging strategy. First let’s look at what type of social media is available:
- Social networking sites – Facebook has become the most popular of these, but to a lesser extent MySpace is still relevant and if you are involved in the South American, African and Asian markets, then Google’s Orkut is your best friend
- Link sharing sites – Twitter is the most appropriate for this as it has a very short character limit of 140, which is ideal for one link and a punchy tag line; Twitter also has a personal flair to it as you can incorporate it with your other web real estate
- Link aggregators – Reddit and Digg are great examples of link aggregator sites; the Huffington Post is a cross between a link aggregator and a news site; these sites are all based around voting for popular links; Ars Technica and Slashdot may be more appropriate for the IT crowd
- Video sharing sites – YouTube is by far the most popular of these and should be a primary focus of your marketing; Vimeo may be more suited for scientific or professional discussions; sites like Break and Wimp are great for starting memes
Making Use of the Media
Social networking sites such as Facebook can be used extremely effectively in your blogging strategy. You can encourage new clients to sign up to your company’s Facebook feed simply by clicking “Like” on your page. When you reach 25 likes, you will be able to set up and personalize your page even more so this should be your first immediate goal. You can use Facebook to share links, pictures and videos and make a short professional comment on them. You can also use the social media site to provide links to your blog on a regular basis. Your subscribers will be notified each time.
Link sharing sites and aggregators should be used to seed interest in your topics. Every time you create a blog post, you should submit it to a site like Digg or Reddit. If your information or entertainment is good enough, then it will go viral and receive thousands of hits in a day. This will bring unprecedented traffic to your site.
Video sharing sites should be used to share professional tutorials and instructional guides to aspects of your business. Depending on what you do, you can fully exploit sites like YouTube and some inexpensive video recording gear set up directly in your workshop.
Melissa Tyler is a tech writer at VPN Ten – a place where you can read reviews about the best VPN providers. She is fond of sharing advice about online security, safety connections and VPN technology.
