Are you struggling to earn engagements as a blogger on social media?
Making the crossover from your blog to social media can be an intimidating process and a difficult one once you get going.
In this post, you will learn how to promote your blog on social media and create the type of content that will be most likely to grow your audience.
How do most blogs promote their posts on social media?
Most new bloggers know they need to promote their latest blog posts on social media.
So, what do most new bloggers do? Create a new draft in a platform like Facebook or Twitter (now X), write a short blurb about the article or even share an interesting fact from it, paste a link toward the bottom of the post, then sprinkle the post with relevant, niche-specific (and a few trending) hashtags.
This creates what’s known as a “link post.”
It seems like a really simple way to promote a blog post, and it is. Unfortunately, link posts do not generate a lot of engagements, not unless the headline is a trending topic in your niche.
Duolingo’s Twitter account is a really good example of this.
Duolingo regularly receives thousands and even as much as hundreds of thousands of likes per post.
This is because they mostly create humorous posts that use their branding but do not directly market Duolingo itself.
But when Duolingo promoted a link from their own blog on their Twitter account, they only received a few hundred likes.
This is a great example of how even a company who regularly receives tens of thousands of engagements per post is not immune to the lack of engagements link posts tend to bring.
You already know about the importance of social media as a traffic source, so we won’t get into that.
But how do you effectively promote your blog on social media if link posts aren’t the way to go?
We have several tips for promoting your blog on social media:
- Use the social media platforms your audience uses.
- Learn the ins and outs of the social media platforms you want to publish to.
- Create original social media content for your niche.
- Create evergreen content that can go viral in the future.
- Use a link in bio page.
- Respond to comments from your audience, and create content with your competitors.
- Use a social media scheduling tool to make managing your social media accounts easier.
1. Determine which social media platforms your audience uses
If you want to receive engagement on your social media content, you need to publish content on platforms your audience actually uses.
This shouldn’t be too hard. Start with the big ones:
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Twitter (now X)
Use each tool’s search bar to look up keywords related to your niche. This will let you see first hand how much content exists for your niche on each platform as well as if any of your competitors are doing well on a certain platform.
Other platforms you might want to check out include Pinterest and LinkedIn.
Make an account for each social media platform that has content related to your niche, even if it’s only a little bit of content.
2. Learn each social media platform you want to publish to
You can use your professional social media accounts to familiarize yourself with each social media platform, or you can create personal accounts that aren’t associated with your business. Whatever you feel most comfortable with.
The point is to actually use the platform as any other user would. Watch videos related to your niche. A lot of them, and read the captions, descriptions and comment sections for each.
View photos as well and any other type of posts available on the platform, such as polls on Twitter or stories on Instagram.
Don’t be afraid to consume content from outside of your niche during this research phase, either. The more content you consume from a platform, the more familiar with it you’ll become.
3. Create original social media content
Here’s where things start to get complicated.
Most bloggers run their blogs in their spare time. This might mean sacrificing sleep or social events to get work done on the blog. This is why so many resort to publishing simple link posts. They’re quick and easy!
To truly see results from social media, you need to up your game by publishing original content for each platform you want to publish to.
This is why we highly recommend you familiarize yourself with each platform you want to publish to. You’ll know exactly what kind of content to create and how to create it.
You can promote your blog on social media by creating stellar content that attracts an audience on a specific social media platform.
You can also promote individual blog posts by turning them into social media content.
For instance, if you publish a blog post on how to crochet a blanket out of a specific granny square pattern, you can create a TikTok or Instagram/Facebook reel that demonstrates how to create that granny square pattern.
You can also use this idea to create an Instagram carousel post that demonstrates how to create the pattern step by step.
Again, the more familiar you become with each platform, the better your ideas for social media content will be.
Here’s an example from i am a food blog.
This is one of the most popular food blogs on the web. They receive over 900,000 visits per month, according to Similarweb, and over 640,000 organic visits per month, according to Semrush.
However, the blog’s popularity is a little lackluster outside of Google. While they have over 233,000 followers, the majority of their posts only receive a few hundred likes each.
Most of their posts feature an image of the recipe they’re promoting with the caption informing viewers they can find the full recipe on the company’s blog.
However, when they posted an Instagram reel that featured spoken step-by-step instructions on how to prepare a recipe, they received 70,000 views and 2,500 likes.
In short, they posted a video specifically for social media and received more engagements than they normally do from it.
4. Create evergreen content
Here’s one good thing about our granny square tutorial idea: it’s evergreen!
This means whether you watch it today or three years from now, it’s still going to be relevant.
It’s important to create evergreen content for social media. If you use platforms like YouTube or TikTok, you’re probably very familiar with a strange phenomenon: content that’s months or even years old suddenly appearing in your recommendations or For You page.
These creators posted something one day and still receive engagements from it well after the fact.
Of course, creating content for trending topics has the potential to earn you a lot of engagements and new followers in a very short period of time.
However, being able to build a library of content your audience can enjoy years from now is incredibly powerful as well.
5. Use a link in bio page
Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram do not allow you to place links in your posts. And link posts on other platforms do not perform well.
So, what are you, a social media marketer, to do about all of the links you have to promote?
Easy. Place them all on a link in bio page.
Use a link in bio tool like Shorby or Tap Bio to create one. This tool, along with every other link in bio tool, allows you to create a simple web page filled with links.
Some social media publishing tools like Pallyy include this feature as well. So, if you already use Pallyy, you can build one of these pages very easily.
So, instead of placing the link in your post, you place it on your Linktree page, then paste a link to that page in the bio of each social media profile you operate.
That way visitors can see all of the links you want to promote in one place.
Then, when you have something to promote, you simply say “link in bio.”
6. Engage with members of your niche
Part of promoting yourself on social media effectively involves growing your presence across multiple social media platforms.
One way to do that is to actively engage with members of your niche. This means your audience and your competitors alike.
Social media thrives on collaboration. If you can collaborate with someone who has more followers than you and shares a like minded audience with you, you can accelerate your success on social media.
If you post content to TikTok, you don’t necessarily need to plan a collaboration with another creator. You can simply stitch one of their videos into yours or duet a video of theirs.
You should also respond to social media comments regularly, and respond to direct messages.
7. Use social media scheduling tools
If you want an easier way to manage your social media publishing schedule, use a social media scheduling tool.
We mostly recommend SocialBee for scheduling. It allows you to schedule posts for multiple social media platforms.
You can even set up content categories for different types of social media campaigns, then choose whether or not certain posts should repost in the future.
SocialBee also includes social streams so you can reply to comments in real-time, and it has great collaboration features for social media marketing teams.
We also recommend a tool called Pallyy. It offers much of the same features as SocialBee offers and is a great option for Instagram users. Instead of social streams, they offer a social inbox with a great UI. Both are great options.
No matter what tool you use, they’ll make it much easier for you to manage all of the content you want to use to promote your blog on social media.
Final thoughts
There’s nothing wrong with publishing link posts and sometimes they genuinely make sense to do.
But it’s important to understand that these posts alone won’t win you the engagement and reach that you need to grow your blog.
So, start creating unique “social first” content for the social media platforms that your audience is most active on.
You’ll see better results by creating tailored content for each network. However, as a timesaver, you could opt for focusing on mobile videos and cross posting them across all of your socials at the same time using a tool like SocialBee.
