How To Promote Your Blog Across All Social Media Channels
Are you trying to up the traffic on your blog? A great way to do so is by cross-promoting your posts. Some ways are better than others when it comes to sharing your posts across all social media channels, but doing it properly will deliver a steady stream of traffic to your blog.
What does it mean to Cross-Promote on Social Media?
Cross-promoting is when you promote your content in a way that fits each social media networks’ characteristic and community.
The most effective way to cross-promote your post is by tailoring each message to best fit each platform and audience. For example, how you address your LinkedIn connections may need to be different than the way you convey your message on Facebook. Pinterest and Instagram are both visual platforms, so you need to have a compelling picture to draw attention to your message. Twitter only allows you to use 140 characters, so keeping your message short and concise is important here.
Images and character counts aren’t the only things that differ from platform-to-platform when it comes to promoting. Sometimes, but not always, you will need to add hashtags to make your image more visible and searchable. Hashtags may work well for Instagram and Twitter but on Facebook and LinkedIn they won’t produce the same results and could actually be more damaging (more on that later.) Your audience will interact with you in various different ways depending on the platform as well; sharing, pinning, liking and so on.
Just to be clear, cross-posting and cross-promoting are two different things, and will likely get you two very different results. Cross-posting is simply posting the same exact post across each platform without taking into account the specifics of each platform. Cross-posting can often come across as lazy or less authentic. Your message should be tailored to each community on each platform. Having a twitter post that says “(company name) has just posted a new photo on Instagram…” could easily make you lose credibility or views.
There are 5 major channels you should consider when cross promoting. Here’s a look on how to best promote your post to appeal to each community.
You can post to several different spots on LinkedIn; your profile, showcase and company pages, and groups. Your company page allows 600 characters, but users will need to click ‘See More’ after the first 150 characters.
If you post to more than just one of these groups, showcases or pages, do so on different days. It is okay to republish and actually highly encouraged. Use different text depending on the group’s audience.
Using an image on your LinkedIn post is a great way to capture your audience.
Your LinkedIn is about you, so make your text personal and engaging. You can ask a question to encourage readers to engage with your post.
LinkedIn is a valued platform for lists and how-to posts. These actually generate the most engagement.
Best times to post on linked in are mid-morning and early evening.
Facebook:
Case studies show that Facebook posts with 50 characters or less are much more engaging than longer posts.
If your post needs to be longer, a Facebook post can contain 10,000 characters max. However, only the first 480 characters are visible on the timeline preview while the rest are shown when you click “See More” so structure your message accordingly!
Using an image is the best way to draw attention to your post. It will also help you in the long run as these uploaded images will automatically be put in your Facebook album, so all your blog images and links will be available in one place for your visitors to access.
Be sure your message is engaging in a way that invites the readers to view and share their thoughts.
Using hashtags on Facebook can make your posts searchable, but it tends to look more spammy and they don’t work well for engagement when it comes to Facebook.
Certain times are better for posting on Facebook than others. Weekdays in the afternoon and evening and weekends are going to give you the best results.
Because of Instagram’s purpose of sharing pictures, the better quality your image, the more engagement you will have.
The lifespan of a post on Instagram is similar to Twitter; much shorter than Pinterest. The most engagement takes place within the first few hours of posting. Though with Instagram’s new algorithm, the engagement on posts is lasting a bit longer.
Because of Instagram’s size restrictions, it is important to scale and size your images properly. The unique square size for Instagram is best at 1080 x 1080 pixels.
Captions can be long, up to 2,200 characters but only the first three lines are displayed in the newsfeed.
Hashtags are most important on Instagram. Use keywords for both the topic of your blog as well as your audience. You can add up to 30 hashtags.
Right now Instagram doesn’t offer clickable links in the captions, but you can always add a URL anyways or point your follows to the clickable link in your profile.
With the new algorithm, posting times don’t matter nearly as much as it used to. It is still a good idea to try to post midday or in the evening hours.
Twitter:
@ handles and hashtags were first popular on Twitter as a way to search and network. Unlike Facebook, it’s a great idea to use them here. A good number of hashtags to use is approx. four. You can use the ‘@’ to mention or give credit to other accounts.
Great news; Twitter recently made changes to their character limit and now give you a little bit more space to write your message. Tweets fewer than 140 characters still work the best to draw attention.
Though Twitter isn’t the most visual platform, your tweets will still perform better if they have a picture or include a link.
Adding a call to action will also improve your results. Ask your followers to retweet you or view your link.
The best posing time for Twitter is early to mid-morning, lunch time, and early evening
Did you know tweets have a lifespan too? The average is 20 minutes, so sometimes you may need to post about it a couple times per day
The image is the most important part of your pin, while the “description” is to convey what your post is about.
The character count is 500, but to help users click, keep your description between 100 and 300 characters. Include keywords and tags in the description as well.
you can post images of any size.
To get users to view your blog post, make sure to always add a link to your description. This will increase the clicks to your site because users can easily click on the pin and be directed right there.
As always, a call to action. Examples are Re-pin, Learn More, or Buy now.
The best time to post on Pinterest is early afternoon, late evening and weekends.
Final Thoughts
Cross-promoting is one of the most valuable ways to get your content seen and your blog read. However, if you cross-post rather than cross-promote you will miss opportunities for prime engagement and outreach.
Tailoring your post to each platform and audience may take more time, but we promise it will greatly improve your results.
What are your thoughts? How do you promote your blog posts across multiple channels? Do some perform better than others? Share your thoughts in the comments!