Promoting Your Blog

I use several different social media networks to promote my blog.Facebook is getting harder to use to promote blog posts, but it is still one of my biggest refers. Pinterest is another big one for me. What works for you?

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I’m old school: I keep an email subscriber list. All my web sites, and my FB business page, have sign up information on each page. Social media is great, but my goal is always to convert the folks that follow me anywhere to email subscribers, because there’s just no substitute for that direct line to someone’s inbox.

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Twitter and Facebook Pages are my main outlets. I have Wordpress publish a tweet whenever a new entry goes up, but I use WP to Twitter so that I can customize the tweet itself. (Which prevents it from being repetitive.)

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@PlayfulKitty I’m with @lisavollrath on this one. Hands down, my mailing list IS my bread and butter for all things pertaining to my blog/podcast/etc.

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Yup, email list, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. I reshare content over and over on all those places - I think folks are afraid to reshare older content, but there’s no reason not to unless it’s timebound.

If I wrote a blog post a year ago and shared it everywhere, I now have 25k+ more folks in those places who never saw it. I use Meet Edgar to create a content library for Facebook/Twitter, so it’s constantly recycling my shares - older posts that are evergreen get reshared about bi-monthly ish once all is said and done.

I do the same thing with my newsletter - but I also use quite a few funnels and email automations (i.e. someone reads X post, they get an email a few days later about Y + Z posts that are on the same topic.) I only do this for the super popular posts, though, to prevent email fatigue and folks can only get each automation once.

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Interesting. Never heard of that. Can you elaborate on your experience with it? Would you recommend it? I just checked out the page and $49,- sound pretty expensive (for my budget) just to auto-post some scheduled posts.

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I used to use Buffer (and still do for Instagram!), but the problem with services like Buffer and the like is that you schedule it once, it goes out once. With Meet Edgar, I add posts to my library on Meet Edgar, create a schedule of social media posts by category, and then it auto-fills my queue and scheduling. Instead of rescheduling the same damn post over and over again over a year, I do it once.

It has saved me hours and hours every month. Once a week, I load any new blog posts into Meet Edgar, and away it goes. It auto-pulls social media posts from the library based on category and the amount of time since it was last shared or added to the library, prioritizing new additions to the library and then posts that haven’t been shared in the longest amount of time.

You can schedule posts once, like you do with other services, but the huge benefit for Meet Edgar is the constant queue. One thing I tell clients is to always value your time at a minimum of $20/hour. If a service saves you 4 hours every month, it’s worth $80. Most services are priced under that equation when they are worthwhile.

It took me months, even knowing that, to commit to Meet Edgar. But once I did, I’m not going back. LOL

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Two things I’ll add here:

One, Tweriod.com will analize your current twitter followers and let you know when they’re most active. IF you use buffer, it can sync your posting times to it. You may be able to do the same with Meet Edgar, but I’ve never tried it.

Second, Schedugram for Instagram is a lifesaver as well if you’re active on Instagram. We use it for my wife’s biz. It’s a lifesaver.

Just for kicks and info: I personally use MailChimp for my mailing list. It’s free for up to 2,000 subs for basic features and was great especially when I was starting out and had a smaller list. I’m not sure I could have done well with it otherwise. After the 2k mark it scales in price based on the number you have on your mailing list. The automation features for paid accounts are nice. Mailchimp isn’t quite as extensive with funnels as some other options like infusionsoft, ontraport, or convertkit, but there is still quite a bit of functionality with it and it does what I need it to for now.

I’ve also found that for me, if I don’t have an email go out at least once a week, my unsubscribes increase. So even if it’s a super short ā€œquick tipsā€ or ā€œhow are you doingā€ kind of email I try to schedule one out. I’ll generally write them whenever I think about something and then schedule it out or add it to the back of my autoresponder sequence.

All of this may be much more than most would want to know. The key really I think is finding what works and automating as much as you can. It isn’t nearly as complicated as it sounds. It does take some time up front getting it all set up, but after that it just does its thing. You could literally spend forever with promotion and communication. Being smart with automation saves you precious time to keep you creating.

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Loved these suggestions, thank you Jody! I’m currently using Later for instagram scheduling, which works SO WELL and is improving all the time (up to 30 free posts per month).

For mailing list, I used Mailchimp until I reached the ā€˜free’ threshold, then moved to Aweber. I’ve recently moved from Aweber over to a newcomer called MailerLite. Love them due to their easy drag 'n drop templates, and SUPER competitive pricing (cheaper than Mailchimp and Aweber). Mailerlite seems super lovely so far, and also improving regularly. The one area I’m not sure about with them is deliverability. I know Aweber is best in field on that level…but anyway, MailerLite seems to be working well.

Haha, ok enough words here!

Thanks for the tips, keep ā€˜em comin’ y’all!

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Kenna, thank you! This has given me much to think about. I’ve tried MeetEdgar several times, but always feel as though I’m spending toooooo much money on something which doesn’t give me enough back.

Thinking now, how I could use it to recycle all my youtube videos on a constant loop, as I’m so proud of them and want them to continue being brought to people’s’ attention.

Anyway, thank you for the food for thought :nerd_face:
Hugs
Nate

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I’ve been using Mad Mimi as my email service for several years, and I can’t say enough good things about them. Their tools are very simple, so you don’t need a PhD to send your first email out. The price is right, and their support is fast and personal (and often very funny, too).

I just started using Buffer this week, and I really like it. It lets me format posts and add the correctly sized images for FB, Twitter, G+ and Instagram, and tweak the posts for each one (links on the first three, but hashtags on IG). I’m using the free version, because I just can’t fork out for yet another paid service right now. It seems to offer everything I need.

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Looks like recurpost is similar to MeetEdgar, but there is a free package, a $25 level, and a $50 level. Looks like it has the same social media connections and says more are coming.

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Looks like recurpost is similar to MeetEdgar, but there is a free package, a $25 level, and a $50 level. Looks like it has the same social media connections and says more are coming.

Nice find!!! Are you going to try it out, @Lochy? If so, please let us know how it goes. I’ll definitely make the switch if its comparable, because duh, saving money. :slight_smile:

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If I can figure it out. :wink: I have no idea how to work it. I’ll definitely let y’all know how it goes.

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Hi, new to Patreon. I’m creator of MacAutomationTips.com. The promotion tools I use include: Buffer, eClincher (similar to MeetEdgar, but $10 cheaper and more tools), Crowdfire for getting Twitter followers, and ConvertKit for email hosting. Note: I also use GetResponse for my other blog site, NaJoWriMo.org, and quite honestly I’m now finding GetResponse to better than ConvertKit for filtering subscribers and creating newsletters. While I’ve have had over 1000 subscribers on both accounts, I regularly delete non-active subscribers to keep it under a 1000, but when I start getting over a 1000 active subscribers, I think I’ll move my MAT subscribers back over to GetResponse.

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Being loath to pay anything when I can get something for free, I use IFTTT.com. This is a service that connects and automates all sorts of apps and services - and all for free. I use it to cross promote posts (e.g. from Instagram to Twitter and Facebook), but you can also use it to schedule posts (using Google Calendar or iOS calendar). For instance: https://easysimplesmart.com/how-to-schedule-your-tweets-for-free-with-ifttt/

Anyway, very useful and powerful.

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I use a mixture of Facebook scheduling, TweetDeck, posting live when I remember, etc, but I think the most referrals probably come from email subscribers to be honest.

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I write a blog about a specific software and blog my is called Kodi Beginner.
I promote my blog using social media including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
It works well and I get a lot of traffic from from them.

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I use twitter, and discord. I don’t ever use Facebook, since they changed their ad dynamic. Most of my patrons & the stalwart folk are on Discord, so having my server auto-post the links to each post gives much more engagement.

But! Caveat, I’m more in the sci-fi genre & a gamer too, so that might just be where my demographic is. Where are your demographics based?

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Facebook is almost out for me. No matter what time of day I post on my author page the reaches are almost always no more than five (very low). FB seems to always be changing their tools or the locations of them. I no longer use Twitter because of all the trivial junk you have to weed through and it’s easier to get harassed on there in which I was at one time. I started using MeWe which is supposed to not use any shady methods like Facebook does and is much more community rather than commercial profit oriented. However, the number of users is small and so it’s harder to make a lot of connections or get a lot of followers, but I just started using it barely a month ago so maybe I just need to give it a little more time. I work with Instagram whenever I get a chance (but they’re owned by FB).