So You Want To Start A Blog - Social Media

In case you have not been here for very long here are the other three posts in the series.

Week 1 - Before You Write A Word
Week 2  - Basic Blog Design
Week 3 - Content



 

This week I am going to keep it short and sweet cause occasionally my real life job, the one that supports my blogging addiction, gets really busy and I need to work from home for an evening.

If you are starting a blog or have had a blog for a while here are my tips to make yourself known to the world.  Anyone can start a blog, but it takes a ton of self promotion.  One of the best ways to grow your blog and get readers is to be active on social media.

If you are a secret blogger I guess you should make new social media accounts.  I personally like it when people in my real life know about my blog and talk about it.  I spend so much time blogging that it would seem strange to not be able to have that conversation with people.

With everything social media related there is a fine line between being informative and being annoying.  It takes time to figure out the balance and it might even change from day to day.  My go to for promoting posts is this 4 tweets in a day, 1 Facebook post, 3 Instagram specific posts, and as many pins as I can muster a week.  This is a loose guideline and it changes daily.

Email 
I think that you should make an email for your blog. I used my personal email for my blog and it was just confusing and too much.

Bloglovin'
I personally love bloglovin.  It is by far the site that generates the most traffic to my little blog. One of the strangest things that I have seen is blogs that are looking for followers but do not have a link to bloglovin'.  If you do not have Bloglovin' I am pretty sure you do not care if I follow your blog.

Twitter
Next up is my twitter account.  I think it is probably the most used social media site for the bloggers of the world.  If you are going to give a shout out to someone, it will probably be on Twitter.  If you want to say "Hey I like your blog and if we met in real life we would be best friends #notcreepy"

Pinterest
If you have some extra time I highly recommend you make your images in your post "pinable."  For this series I pin the main image and I have actually generated a lot of traffic from Pinterest once a week.  I am not a graphic designer and I do not have a ton of time to spend making things look Pinterest Perfect, but once our twice a week I take a little extra time to do this one thing to help my blog grow.

Facebook
I guess people still use Facebook.  I might have a different take on Facebook than other people, but I sometimes feel like it is a waste of time.  I will say that when I first started blogging Facebook was my favorite way to promote my blog. I would post it on my personal Facebook page and my mom and family would read a few of my posts.  After a few months I started a blog page and only people who follow that page can see my posts.  Create one if you want to, update it with your posts, and move on.

Instagram 
I think Instagram is my favorite form of social media.  I love that I have a more personal connection with some followers and I can see what they are up to.  I do not think it brings people directly to my blog, because you can not put links in your photo captions.  I really love Instagram though and I think it helps readers get a more complete picture elf you as a person.

Google+
So I do not really get Google+ but I will use it.  I post all my posts on Google+ because I think it helps them get higher in search engines when you google.  It makes sense right, Google+, Google same thing man!

So what do you think?  Is there any social media that I missed that you would recommend to a blogger? What is your recommendation for self promotion across social media.