Resources for FitBloggin' 2012 Session: Using Social Media to Drive Blog Traffic
Note: I'm still adding more notes and links and such, so check back as this will continue to be updated. For a full session recap, check it out on the FitBloggin' website.
Session Overview:
So many of us love Facebook for personal use and staying in touch with friends. What if you could use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and other social media channels to increase blog traffic and build a stronger community? With existing social media sites gaining more mainstream popularity and new sites appearing monthly, how do you determine which are the best ones for increasing blog readership?
Topics include:
- An overview of the most popular social media sites and any emerging sites that could be beneficial to blog traffic
- Ways to optimize your presence on social media channels
- A set of tools you can use to more efficiently use your time on social media sites
- Ways to measure and evaluate which of your social media efforts are bringing in the most traffic
This session will be presented by Emily Sandford, weight loss blogger behind Skinny Emmie. Emily owns Authentically Social, a social media marketing agency. If you have specific topics you would like her to cover, leave a comment here or tweet her @skinnyemmie.
Here is the presentation. You can also download a PDF here.
Tips:
- Install and familiarize yourself with analytics
- Provide sharing options in your blog posts
- Create and share different types of content
- Share other peoples posts
- Try different posts and watch where your traffic is coming from. You don't have to be on every network all the time: you can begin by focusing on where your existing traffic is coming from, and tweak and test based on this.
Resources:
- Hashtag finder: Want to know if a certain hashtag is used and see what some recent tweets are under that tag? Check out hashtags.org and think of some hashtags you might want to incorporate into some tweets
- Complete list of Twitter Chats (Google Doc)
- Popular fitness blog hashtags: #fitblog, #fitbloggin, #fitness, #plankaday, #fitfluential, #runchat
- Article: Twitter Chats: A Goldmine of Traffic, Followers and Knowledge
- Find your audience using different analytics applications
- Crowdbooster: When are your existing followers most active?
- Minilytics: For Facebook Pages. What is the best type of Facebook content for you and when should you post it?
- Pinerly: Pin your content through Pinerly and get reports on how many likes, shares, and total views it got in order to tailor your content pinned
- Buffer: Using the Crowdbooster times, set up Buffer to post to your accounts at those times and set up your Buffer queue to post when best for your followers, not necessarily the exact moment you post it.
- Hootsuite: Social media management tool – track keywords, hashtags, and monitor your Twitter lists
- Article on using Twitter Lists to create a “notice me” list. Great when you feel like Twitter is too overwhelming as a whole – focus on your key influencers or people you're trying to connect with.