9 New Creative Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog Posts

A good social media marketing strategy usually goes hand-in-hand with a good blogging strategy. But once you create your content, where on social media do you share it? Even I am guilty of forgetting the many places to share blog posts on social media!

Once your blogging and social strategies are in place, you should know just about how frequently you are going to be blogging and what social media platforms you are going to be engaging on.

That being said, you most likely won’t use all of the places to share blog posts I have listed. The other thing to keep in mind is that you need to have your social and blogging objectives in mind at all times.  If your audience isn’t engaging with the blog posts you are sharing on social, then there may be a problem; you may not be on the right social media platforms and/or your content may not be engaging.

Here are seven basic places to share blog posts on social media you can try:

1. Facebook.  Share a blog post on Facebook. However, try to get creative. Don’t just post a title and the link. Try to pull a quote or statistic from your blog post to use as the caption. Though there is no character limit on Facebook, it’s still best to keep your captions to a minimal number of characters because short captions have proved to get higher levels of engagement. After you have your caption figured out, I recommend using a shortened link and an engaging photo. Lastly, include a hashtag or two about your content so that those looking for information about your content can find it more easily even if they aren’t following your page. (For more tips on how to write good Facebook posts READ THIS.)
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3. Twitter. Again, when you share your blog posts on Twitter, try to pull a quote or a statistic from your content and use that as your Tweet. This will make for a tweet more likely to get retweeted. Including hashtags is encouraged as well. Remember, the lifespan of your tweets is not very long. In fact, Moz does the math and estimates 18 minutes. Keep this in mind when scheduling out your tweets. While obviously you don’t want to share the same blog post over and over again, I recommend repurposing your content several times. 
4. Change the wording of the tweet each time. Social Sharing Tip: If old content is still relevant, you can always re-share that as well.
5. Pinterest. Create a board of your blog content. Have you noticed that “Pin It” buttons appear on almost every single image on the Internet now? Once a week I go through the most recent blog posts I’ve written and very quickly and easily pin all of my content to my blog board using engaging captions that also include keywords people might be searching for.
6. LinkedIn profile. Share your blog posts on your personal LinkedIn page as well as your company page, if you have one.  Try to include a clever caption that will spark engagement, such as “13 Best Twitter Tips. What are your favorite twitter tips? www.linktoyourcontent.com.” See how that works? You share you content but also spark a conversation.
7. LinkedIn groups. There are two basic ways to share your content in LinkedIn groups. First of all, if you are in any LinkedIn groups, you may notice that LinkedIn can get pretty spammy. Don’t be one of those spammers and just dump your content in mass loads into every group you are in. First, find a relevant group to the topic you have written about.  Then, like when sharing your content on your personal or professional page, try to spark engagement with a question.
   The other way you can share content in LinkedIn groups is by finding a group discussion that you have a blog post in common with. For example, maybe there is a conversation going on in a LinkedIn group about Pinterest. I could take this as an opportunity to go to that conversation leave my two cents worth and then end with: “By the way, I wrote a blog post that discusses this topic at more length here: www.linktoyourblogpost.com.”
8. Google+ communities. Similar to posting in LinkedIn groups, if you are implementing an effective Google+ strategy, you are probably in relevant communities to your industry. While you can also post on your profile page on Google+, when you post in a community that post also shows up on your personal page killing two birds with one stone if you will. If you have a Google+ personal and business page you will want to make sure you post the article on the page that you weren’t originally posting in the community  from. When posting in Google+ communities, follow the same best practices of sparking engagement, creating a captivating title and using relevant hashtags.
9. Instagram. If you have an effective Instagram strategy in place, encouraging followers to visit your blog in the caption of an engaging photo is a good way to direct traffic to your post. Try to keep these “promotional” posts nicely mixed in with your strategy. Don’t go overboard.
   
   While these are seven smart places to share blog posts on social media, I DO NOT suggest posting in all seven places for every blog post you write. That could get incredibly time consuming. Stick to the platforms in your social media strategy.  Furthermore, don’t just share content for the sake of sharing content. The goal isengagement with that content.