Finished writing your blog post? Congratulations! But guess what? If you thought your post was finished after writing it; well sorry to break it to you but you’re only halfway done. Today with social media, it is critical that you ‘socialize’ your post as the best way to spread your good words. Otherwise, what is the point of all the time you spent writing it?
After years of mastering the five paragraph essay, writing a concise blog post took more creative energy than I expected. Think of it as a challenge and not content that requires more work. I think Neil Patel, an industry expert in digital said it best in How to Write a Blog Post, “You aren’t here to write a term paper, you are here to create a conversation!” Social media is how you generate that conversation. When thinking about the particular content that I could post on social media I find that my best fall back plan is to be authentic and conversational. Social media confines the amount of space you have so be short, direct and to the point. Tweet This! Posts can be made more valuable with imagery, which gives another perspective to the post.
Blogging One Day…Socializing The Next
There are many social media channels that are available to use in publicizing your post. One of the ways to decide what social media tools to post on is figuring out where your best following is based on your target market. For example here at Net-Results, we don’t generally promote blog postings on Instagram or Vine because our following with these social media tools is not large. However, we do utilize many of the other multimedia tools available.
Facebook, LinkedIn & Google+
Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are three forms of social media where using an image can generate more interest in the post. Adding a summary, along with the link back to the blog will help publicize the post and increase SEO. Using an image, along with a summary is the best way to get attention.
Twitter
When composing a tweet your space is limited to 140 characters, it is usually best to use your post title and a link with hashtags about the topic. When including a link in your tweet, Bitly is a great resource that shortens the url. It’s a tool that’s free of charge and helps the characters stay within the restriction of the post.
Pinterest
Pinterest is a great social media tool to see numerous images. It is a tool that is primarily a visual social media tool. You pin the main image of the blog post followed by a short summary in the description section below the image. Pinterest is a very useful form of social media because it automatically has the link created.
Social Posting Capability With Net-Results
Another way that we at Net-Results utilize social media and our blog posts is by utilizing the new Socialize capability within our marketing automation platform. This feature in Net-Results provides the capability to schedule a Twitter and Facebook post, with LinkedIn and Google+ coming right behind it. This is a really exciting feature that we are very enthusiastic about.
Why Socializing Your Post Matters
Why should you take the extra time to socialize? Well, check out these statistics and see why socializing is worth taking that extra time.
- The top 20% of B2B marketers use social sharing tools to generate leads 12% more often than the rest of the B2B marketing industry (Forrester).
- According to a separate Forrester survey of 50 B2B marketers conducted, the top tactics marketers plan to use (in 2013) for lead-gen are Twitter posts (82%), online communities (79%), blogs (76%), LinkedIn discussion groups (76%), LinkedIn pages (76%) and Twitter offers (74%)” (Forrester).
