One of my favorite parts of blogging is social media, I love being able to connect with y’all on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook! As much as I love interacting here on this space I think social media is just so much more personal, especially Instagram, we’re going to spend some more time later on in the month delving into each platform, but for now, let’s talk social media basics!
Getting Started
Yesterday we talked about making sure to check to see if your domain is available, you should do the same thing with your social media channels when you start your blog! Even if you don’t plan to launch all of the social media channels right away (totally okay!), scoop up those names so that you don’t have a ton of different handles that are variations of your blog name! If you can’t get your blog’s name on your social media channels I’d use your real name, but remember things change quickly in the world of social media so check back frequently and see if you can scoop up that handle later on. I’m still waiting on a few of mine…
Feeling a little overwhelmed with all of the different social media platforms, hashtags and lingo that we bloggers use? Don’t worry, once you get the hang of it, it will seem like a no brainer!
As of now there are 5 most popular social media platforms: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Snapchat
Here are some of the others out there: Google+, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Vine, YouTube, Tumblr, Periscope
Strategy
When thinking about social media strategy it’s all about the 3 v’s: voice, visual, vision!
First you want to make sure your voice is uniform across all of your platforms, if you have a certain tone in your blog but speak to your other audiences in a completely different one. Keep it consistent! With that said, your audiences might vary from platform to platform so you should find a way to keep your brands voice the same, you may need to present the information a little differently to keep your audiences engaged.
Your visual, much like your voice needs to maintain consistency across all of your platforms. Make sure your logo and branding is the same so your audiences know it’s you no matter where they go. Beyond branding, you need to be sure that your visuals are appealing!
When you’re starting out, figure out your vision for your platforms and stick to it. This should be a combination of your voice and visuals, write it all down and refer back to it when it starts to look like you’re losing sight of your vision!
Management and Analytics
Social media can be a full time job in itself, I know, it’s now my day job, and with content development for your blog or business on top of your full time job it can be a lot! Thankfully there are some great tools out there to help save you some time! In addition to scheduling your posts ahead of time, analytics are important, it helps us as bloggers to understand what is working and what isn’t so we can continue to grow our audiences!
Hootsuite is probably the most common scheduler used by bloggers, it’s great. You can schedule all of your posts for Facebook, Twitter and now Instagram on it either manually or using their auto schedule feature!
One of my favorite tools to use right now is Sprout Social, it has all the capabilities of Hootsuite plus an absolutely killer analytics and reports section to better understand Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!
Facebook itself also has a scheduler feature as well as it’s own insights tool to look at the analytics from the month. I tend to use Sprout Social for scheduling on Twitter and just schedule Facebook directly on my page! I also like to compare the data from Facebook Insights to Sprout Social!
A Few Don’ts
don’t only post links to your blog
don’t be mean or offensive
don’t complain non stop, or at all, unless it’s funny and with a light relatable tone
don’t ask for people to follow you, instead provide great content that will make them want to follow you!
don’t bring your drama to social media
Okay, take a deep breath. I just threw a lot of info out at you so if you’re overwhelmed that’s okay! I’m going to be talking a little bit more about each of the big platforms this month so stay tuned and let me know what your questions are!
