Blogging and Social Media Make a Perfect Match

Gracielou — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 09:42:51 +0000

There’s no doubt that blogging is a powerful marketing tool. Companies and small business owners who have been using this method can attest to its effectiveness. In fact, this online tool is also helpful in improving an organization’s marketing efforts on social media platforms. And with a strategy combining blogging and social media, a company or any business owner for that matter can be sure to reap the rewards moving forward. One way to maximize the potential of your blog is to share every blog post on social media. On Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter, you can share the link to your post. Experts recommend not to do a hard sell kind of status update on the social networking sites. If people see that the post looks like a sales page, they tend to move to another site and not read through what you’ve written. An ideal way to share a blog post on social media is to make your status update 80 percent informative and 20 percent self-promotional. This is a better way to encourage readers to click on your link and bring them to your blog particularly when they see the first part of the post as interesting to read. If they find the post valuable, they will likely read other articles on the blog and find out more about the author or publisher. When sharing your blog post, make sure that the image included in your article is also being displayed. Research has shown that a post with photo normally gets more engagement on social media compared to those that provides only a link. Also, you can mention certain people or businesses in your status updates particularly those you include in the blog post. You can use the hashtag on Twitter and tag them in your Facebook update. Fortunately, there is now a way to schedule posts on social media sites. This will enable you to share status updates several times in a day without having to log in to your account every time. Facebook allows this but if you want to use only one site to automate your posts, Hootsuite is a popular site to use. Photo via smashinghub

Blogs Edge Out Social Networks

Gracielou — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:16:31 +0000

The media, in general, greatly impacts a consumer’s decision to purchase products and services. These days, however, the social media plays a vital role. But if you think that the popular social media sites such as Facebook is a major influence, you’re not quite right. Blogs are currently the winner when it comes to influencing consumers. A new report by Technorati entitled 2013 Digital Influence confirmed that consumers now rely on blogs when deciding on their purchases. Specifically, blogs ranked third as the most influential digital resource when making purchases after retail sites and brand sites. Compared with social media, blogs occupied a higher spot than Facebook, YouTube and even Twitter. Those that provide valuable and compelling content were found to be the most trusted source of people when they decide on what to buy and where to buy them. For this reason, the experts suggest that companies start a blog if they want to be a major influencer to their regular and prospective customers. The key, they stressed, is to gain the trust of people by providing useful and compelling content on a regular basis. The report also found that the size of an online community matters. More than half of the people surveyed said a smaller community have a major influence on a particular topic. This means that popularity does not always translate to positive results. When it comes to promoting an important topic, trust and influence counts. As for social media, there’s no doubt that Facebook is the top choice of brands in their marketing campaigns. Research has shown that most people hang out on Facebook and companies have recognized its significance in their promotional efforts. Photo via zachbussey

Jack of All Blogs

Blogging and Social Media Make a Perfect Match

Blogs Edge Out Social Networks