Peanut butter and jelly. Pork and beans. Peaches and cream. Some things are just better served together. And this holds true for blogging and social media.

Wait! What’s so good about linking blogging with social media marketing?

I’m glad you asked!

Blogging is good. Being active on social media is also good. But put the two strategies together and marketing magic can happen.

Why is Blogging for Social Media So Great?

Because:

• It leads to increased brand awareness. In other words, people realize you and your business exist. (Step 1 in the buyers journey.)
• It can increase engagement. Instead of posting memes and other “fluff” content, sharing your blog on social gives people the chance to get their teeth into something solid and really helpful — which often leads to higher engagement. And shares.
• It provides social proof. The more times your post is shared, the more it indicates that people have found it helpful and valuable information. Which encourages other people to take the time to check it out too. 
• It will grow your social audience. An audience of raving fans leads to your content being seen more widely — and setting up a positive feedback loop of share-grow-share-grow.  

Which leads to…

An increase in traffic to your website. Which is the end goal of posting your own material to social media in the first place! Always be aiming to have your audience move FROM social TO your website.  

Why? Because that’s your store front, the place people can best see what you offer, and the place where they’re most likely to decide to hire you.

What Sort of Blog Posts Do Well on Social Media? 

The most successful types of posts are informative, entertaining, or surprising. These are the kind that are most likely to grow your social audience. Here’s a little more about each:

Informative

They often solve a problem or answer a question. How-to posts, listicles (e.g. 5 ways to…) and question-based posts are all great for this. Make sure to give quick tips and easy wins so people can get the benefit from your advice straight away. 

Entertaining

Successful posts sometimes provoke a strong emotion. How often have you shared a post because it made you laugh out loud or cry into your coffee?

Surprising

A memorable — and shareable — post might shake the reader up by being shocking or surprising. (I’m not talking about obscene or offensive material — keep it clean! However, posts that give unexpected or counter-intuitive information can be hugely popular as they make the writer AND the sharer stand out from the crowd.)

Play Tag

Another type of post that can really grow your audience is the “promote another business” post. You might be wondering why you’d want to promote someone else’s business…

So they can promote yours!

It goes like this: write a post that references other businesses in your area. Perhaps do a review of dog-friendly cafes, or talk about local canine health providers. 

When you share your blog post on social media, tag the businesses you review or mention (assuming you gave a positive review!).  There’s a pretty good chance they’ll read your post and share it on their own social media pages too. The algorithms then pick up on the fact that your content is popular and push it further.

This technique can be really powerful because it allows you to borrow their audience. The power of social media is that it allows you to be introduced to people that otherwise might never know you exist.  

Recipe for a Great Blog Post on Social Media

Once you have your post written there are a few areas that’ll need some special attention. A bit of social media polish, if you will. You’ll need:

A Fantastic Headline

When you blog to grow your social audience, your headline needs to REALLY stand out to stop the mindless scrolling. If you want to see what works, just take a look at your own news feed. How many click bait-y headlines do you see that just jump out and grab your attention?  

I’m not suggesting you write headlines that make promises your post can’t keep (i.e., the definition of clickbait!) but you can certainly steal some of the headline formulas these people use. 

Techniques such as framing your post as “can’t miss” or “must have” information can help it stand out from the crowd. E.g. “7 must-have dog toys for the busy border collie in your life”.

Not sure how well your headline will work? Give a free headline analyzer tool a try. Just don’t get too tied up trying to create the perfect headline — these tools are for guidance only!

Enticing Teaser Text

This is the blurb that’ll appear on your social media post before the reader clicks through to the main article on your website. Depending on your blogging platform, it’ll usually be a separate box that asks you for an excerpt or summary of your post. Don’t skip out on filling this! This needs to provoke curiosity and pull the reader in so they just have to click on the link to find out what comes next. 

An Eye-Catching Picture

Make sure to use a great picture for your blog post. When you share a post to social media, the feature image you’ve used in your blog is displayed in your social feed post. 

You want something eye-catching that clearly illustrates the topic discussed. Most social platforms are very visual — images are much more likely to grab someone’s attention than just text.  

You can either take your own pictures, or find Creative Commons ones that are free to use for commercial purposes. Check out Unsplash, Pexels, or Pixabay to get started.

Video (Optional Extra for More Pulling Power)

If your blog post includes video, either share the full video from its YouTube link or a short clip in a social post which includes the blog post URL.  

Be sure to include a link back to the original blog page in the YouTube description. That way, if someone comes across the video directly from YouTube (which is a search engine in its own right) they can easily find the complete article/blog on your website.

Social Icons for Easy Sharing

On the website end, make sure you have share icons activated on your blog pages. If you want plenty of shares, it pays to make it super easy for readers to do. 

Share Tactics

Once you’ve created your masterful blog post for sharing on social media, you’ll want to get the most from your efforts. Here’s how to maximize your results:

Include Hashtags

Hashtags (#hashtags) make your post easy to find. Social platforms use hashtags to know what your post is about and how to categorize it. On Facebook, people can search for hashtags that interest them, which turns the platform into a search engine of sorts! 

Hashtags are even more powerful on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. On these platforms, not only can people search for specific hashtags but they can like and follow them too. Let’s say someone follows the hashtag #clickertraindogs. If you use that hashtag on an appropriate post, it’s highly likely to appear in their feed. 

TikTok in particular is very hashtag oriented, and uses them to curate your personal algorithm. TikTok pulls in the hashtags from the videos you watch all the way through, and will make its own decisions about which hashtags it thinks you want to follow, based on the content you watch.

Share on Multiple Platforms — But Not All at Once

When you write a blog post you create a whole bunch of content. You don’t have to limit yourself to only sharing this in one big hit, a Facebook post with a link, for example. Instead you can create “soundbites” (pithy bits of text over a photo), infographics, and video clips if you used video in your blog.  

Different formats will work best on different platforms but all of them can direct people back to your website. It’s probably best to stagger your posts rather than releasing them all at once — you don’t want to swamp your followers with too much of the same thing in one go! 

Re-share Evergreen Posts

Don’t be afraid to re-share an evergreen post, and content from it, more than once. As your audience and reach grows, new people will be seeing your posts so you won’t be repeating yourself to people who have already seen it.

This way your material reaches more people over time and you have to create less of it. Win-win!

Match Made in Heaven?

I hope you can see how well blogging and social go together, just like coffee and cake!

To get ahead in business you need clients. And social media is a great way to get the word out there that you exist AND know what you’re doing. By adding your blog content to your social media posts, you exponentially increase your chances of success without doubling your workload. 

What’s not to love? Bring on that coffee and cake!