Blog Challenge 8: Managing Social Media

Last Updated on July 22, 2018

This post is part of my ongoing series based upon the eBook 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. To read all of my other posts on the subject, check out the 31DBBB category. For more on the book itself, visit ProBlogger.

Day 8 focuses on building an audience with the assistance of social media. Social media can definitely bring people to your blog, especially people who don’t necessarily visit your site regularly.

My blog has its own Facebook page. I link posts there and occasionally post links to other sites there as well.

Then there’s my Twitter account, where new posts are automatically tweeted as they appear. I also tweet additional mentions of most posts a few more times over the next 24 hours to help ensure that more people who are watching their Twitter streams have the chance to see the mention.

Recently, I added a Google+ page.

That’s a lot to manage when you’re trying to post regular content. But it’s one of those necessary evils bloggers are under more pressure to handle if they want to continue to grow their sites.

The challenge for Day 8 is to pick one of the social media communities to focus on for your blog building.

For me, the choice is easy: Facebook.

As I said, Twitter automatically gets a tweet every time I post a new entry. And G+, while I like it, isn’t bringing in that many visitors, yet; I think it will as the site grows, and in many ways, I like it better than Facebook. But for now, G+ isn’t that big of a draw in terms of blog readers.

Meanwhile, I know people I work with have seen my blog specifically because of Facebook. I know they’re not just saying that to be nice because they’ve mentioned specific posts I’ve written. That always surprises me when they do that; I’m flattered, but it still surprises me (pleasantly, of course) when someone actually tells me that they’ve visited my little blog.

Conventional blogging wisdom insists that using auto-posts on social media is a bad idea. Just for the record, I agree completely. It’s much better to craft something specific for each of the social media platforms you use, and to post up to three or four times, at different times of day or night, to get the most bang for your efforts.

But here’s the thing: there are only so many hours in the day. If my blog were my full-time job, if I never had to go to work at a real job, I would have a much easier time creating customized links to every post I do on every social platform I can find. But this is the real world: it isn’t always possible.

When I have crafted tweets that go beyond the generic blog title and link, I do occasionally get replies. But for the most part, those are few and far between. I don’t get a great deal of comments when I craft a link on the blog’s Facebook fan page, but the last time I checked the stats, I get slightly more traffic from Facebook than Twitter. (Sometimes it’s more of a tie.)

Incidentally, if you aren’t following me, check out the social media buttons at the top of the sidebar: you’ll find the link to the Facebook fan page, where you can click the “Like” button to see my blog posts and other amusing links from other sites; my Twitter page where you can follow me there, and my Google+ page where you can add me to one of your circles.

Are you using social media for your blog? If so, which ones do you think are the most effective and how much effort are you putting into them?