How to Use Social Networking to Promote Your Blog

Blogging is one of the best strategies for solopreneurs to promote their products and services on line. The best business bloggers have found the perfect balance of content that both markets to and educates their prospects and returning clients.

After choosing the right platform for blogging (WordPress, Tumblr, Facebook Fan Pages, etc…) and ensuring that the content is relevant and valuable, comes the big tasks of promotion. Savvy solopreneurs understand the need to get the word out about their blog and make blog promotion a priority.  But building a blog is just the first step, what’s critical is learning how to promote your blog it. Social networking is one of the lines that lead your prospects to your blog where you main job is to turn prospects from browser to buyer.

Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious and Stumble Upon are all huge right now with millions of members each from all over the world. Obviously you don’t want to, and won’t be able to, reach all of them, so you will want to target specific groups or persons; basically you want to reach all of the people who are going to be interested in what you have to sell or offer.

Making social networking work for you consists of a few main elements. When you incorporate them into your overall marketing plan, traffic to your blog increases, which can ultimately lead to more referrals and more sales.

The first way to make your social networking efforts practical is to identify your target market. Is your target market work at home moms, men, women, single people, mother’s, dad’s, etc…?

Once you have identified your potential paying clients (aka target market), you need to know which social networks are popular with them and join them.

Start with connecting with your target audience by adding them as friends or followers. Where possible, start with one person in your target market who is already connected on the  social network you have chosen to help introduce you to new people in your niche.

One thing you will find about social networks is there are millions of people. You will get people adding you that will never buy from you or become regular readers of yours, but they may be a friend or follower of someone else who will. But don’t add people simply to have a huge number of friends or followers. If that is your goal, then that is all you will have. The idea is to build relationships with these friends and followers so they get to know you and trust you and then perhaps they will become regular subscribers to your business blog.

Now that you have been introduced and made initial connections with your target prospects, it’s time to engage. There are four ways to engage through social networking:

• Asking questions: ask for feedback, for referrals, for recommendations, for opinions…the goal here is to spark valuable virtual dialogue.
• Responding to questions and comments: Reply to questions, acknowledge other people’s accomplishments, offer feedback, ideas and suggestions
• Share your expertise and offers: Providing links to relevant content (yours and other people’s) is one of the main ways to position yourself as an expert and resource in your niche. Be careful not to over promote your content, a good ratio to follow is 7 to 1: for every one link to your content, share a link to 7 items from other people.
• Be a connector: Create winning networking connections for those in your networking circle. Connect them to people, opportunities, and resources that will help them in their business.

Notice that only one component of promoting your blog through social networking refers to posting links to your content. That’s because at the end of the day, promoting anything via social networking, is about building relationships. The more you get to know your prospects and give them a chance to know you through your posts, the more likely they are to follow the links you share, to check out your site, and develop a natural interest in what you have to offer.

Beware of over eager promotion that borders on desperation. The magic formula for successfully using social networking to promote your blog looks like this: Relationship + Value (content and connections) + consistency = increased traffic.

Happy Blogging!

Tags: blog, blogging, online marketing, social media, social networking

Category: Blogging, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking