Most bloggers seeking to promote content on social media will research strategies to increase user engagement, which occurs when a social media follower responds to, shares/re-tweets, or somehow interacts with content on social media. Still, many continue to overlook mistakes in the tone, delivery and frequency of their social media content and blog posts.
If bloggers avoid the common mistakes about promoting on social media below, they can stabilize or increase their followers’ engagement on social media, which will aid considerably in the promotion of their blog.
5 Mistakes Bloggers Make When Promoting on Social Media
1. Overly Wordy Updates
Many people are now accustomed to the web as their primary source of content. Most popular web sites all recognize the importance of one thing: conciseness. For example, CNN has sidebar widgets that show similar stories, along with a listing of bullet-pointed highlights from the longer story below. This exemplifies that people prefer digesting small bits of information, especially on the web, where concise quality reigns over quantity any day.
When writing a blog post you hope to promote on social media, make sure the actual blog content is frequently separated into paragraphs, with bullet-points or lists whenever possible. This condensed format will increase the likelihood that others will share the post on social media.
2. Non-Catchy Social Media Headlines
Just as your blog posts should be concisely effective, so should your posts on social media. When posting a link to your blog post on social media, be sure to precede it with a catchy headline consisting of only a few words that will make people want to click. For example, instead of using the headline “Here are 5 great smoothie recipes for summer,” use something along the lines of “You won’t believe what smoothie ingredient can increase your sex drive.” It’s pretty clear which headline would get more clicks.
Similarly, if you are dealing in an expert niche, such as posting about types of commercial security gates, realize that the quality of followers matters more than the number of them. When writing in a very specific niche like that, it’s important to expand the topic on occasion. In this case, creating a blog post about their role in correctional facilities may draw additional interest.
3. Self-Absorption
Your blog may be great and your social media followers may know that. That doesn’t mean that’s the only thing they want to read on your social media page, though. They also want to see which articles you read and find interesting. If you discover an interesting article on another site related to your blog’s niche, post it a link to it. Just because it’s not your own doesn’t mean it will be detrimental to your user engagement.
Linking to articles apart from your own will actually increase engagement, since it will give your users more to talk about. Similarly, engaging in that discussion with them will only increase their trust and loyalty in you and your blog, since they are relating to you on a conversational level as opposed to just reading what you type.
4. Untimely Topics
Producing timely content is important for both SEO and social media. For SEO, it’s important to keep up with timely keywords so your search engine traffic does not suffer. With social media, the point of engagement is to pique followers’ interests. If you are covering an outdated topic, it is considerably less likely that readers will feel inclined to share or comment on it, even if it is interesting. If bloggers must cover an untimely topic, they better make sure they are bringing something new to the table.
5. Making Sharing Very Difficult
Every one of your blog posts and web pages should feature a share widget on the sidebar, where visitors can share your blog’s content with a single click. At the very least, link to your blog’s Facebook and Twitter pages site-wide using their official buttons and badges. Make sharing content on social media as easy as possible for users to increase engagement.
By avoiding the five common mistakes above, when promoting on social media channels, bloggers should notice their blog receiving more readers via social media in no time. After some time, producing concise content, catchy headlines, timely topics and eclectic links will become like second nature.
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See also: How to Use Traditional Marketing within Social Media
