Just like with any other type of brand or business, a blog or online publication needs a great social media presence in order to build a solid audience. You can't rely on great content and SEO to get you there, as you need to amplify your content through social media. If you need help building and maintaining a presence your audience will love, here are five ways you can maintain an awesome social media presence for your blog or online publication:
Don't Just Share Your Own Content
I know, I know, you built a social media presence for your blog or online publication to bring people to your own content. We're not saying you shouldn't share your own content. We're saying variety is the spice of social media, and that it's totally okay, even beneficial, to share something other than your latest articles. You could share insights or statistics that you audience could find interesting. You could ask them a question, or have them fill in a blank in a sentence. You could even share articles from a partner site or something that you read that day that you found interested. Just because you're sharing something other than your content doesn't necessarily mean that you're driving people away.
Do Share Things Regularly
The last thing you want to do is create your profiles and have them collect dust. Even if you only blog once a week, make an effort to share something on social media at least twice a week. It shouldn't be too difficult to find content to share if you're publishing every day or multiple times a day, but with that it can be hard to find the time to post. Use tools like Hootsuite or Facebook's scheduling tool to have things post while you're away, or make it a point to share something as soon as its published.
Tip: Take this one step further by doing more than just posting the link. You could either add something to the link, like a question or a hint as to what the article's about to get folks interested in reading it. You could also post the article as a picture, instead of a link, since pictures have been found to garner more clicks than links.
Fill in All the Blanks
Make sure to fill in all the form fields for any social media profile, or at least all the ones that apply. We grant that as a blog or online publication, you might not have hours of operation or an "industry", but that doesn't mean the email or the description should be left blank either. Filling in all the blanks does more than inform your readers, but it also makes your profile look cared for, as if you took the time to put together that presence and think about what you want to present, instead of something you slapped together because you were told that you needed a Facebook page or a Twitter feed.
Make Your Content Easy to Share
Every single article should have social media sharing! How do you expect people to read your content, and to widen your audience, if you don't make it easy for your current readers to share your articles with their network? Too many blogs and online publications for get this one. You don't have to include all the social networks (it's recommended that you don't either), so at the very least include Facebook, Twitter, and email. You might want Pinterest if you're a fashion or lifestyle blog, and perhaps LinkedIn if you are a business or industry online publication.
What else is required for an awesome social media presence? What do you do to maintain your social networks? Let us know in the comments!