14 Ways to Build a Social Blog
Brands with blogs often rely on social platforms to drive web traffic. The standard amplification tactic typically involves posting the blog headline and link on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+, and hoping people click on them. According to Social Media Examiner’s annual Social Media Marketing Industry report, 75% of those surveyed said that increased website traffic was the second major benefit of being on social media. This statistic really justifies the need to ensure that once you get people to your blog, they continue to talk about your content and optimize your social activity. Amplification isn’t just when you push your content out…it’s when you do so, then other people do so and then their connections do the same.
By developing an ecosystem that operates collaboratively as one strategic machine, you’ll more effectively get your content out to your potential audience while optimizing reach and ROI. In a successful ecosystem, a blog is well integrated to your social activity. That means that your blog is driving traffic to social and social drives traffic to your blog. You are generating new traffic from immediate social connections and taking advantage of the full, extended network.
So what are you doing now? You probably (hopefully) have at least the basics. Your posts likely have sharing buttons at the top and/or bottom of the article. Maybe your sidebar has links for people to connect with you directly on social networks or Twitter and Facebook feeds. Hopefully you have a way for readers to subscribe to your RSS feed or even an email newsletter. All of these components are great – and highly recommend. But let’s talk about ways you can uplevel the integration of social into your blog to have more than just the basics.
- Twitter-fy your headlines
Make sure your headlines are less than 120 characters. You have a 140 character limit to work withon Twitter, but a website link takes 20 characters. Ideally, try to leave even more room so that people can RT your post without editing your skillfully crafted headline and so that users have room for a hashtag or comment.
- Assign thumbnails for sharing
Facebook and other networks use photos from your post as a thumbnail image, and help make your content more visual. Make sure that you have images designated as your social image for the blog post, and ensure that the specific image comes up. Not sure how to do this? Send your web developer to this article on Yoast.org on the Facebook Open Graph Protocol and how to use it to optimize your blog images for Facebook.
- Optimize bios on a multi-author blog
If you have a blog with multiple authors make sure that their bios are easily accessible. A lot of blogs, including really high profile ones, link the byline name to a separate author page. Ideally the author bio is included on the same page as the blog post so that readers can have context around the person is writing the post and easily connect with the author on social.
- Encourage content subscriptions
An RSS icon isn’t enough. Honestly, a lot of readers don't even know what RSS is. Encourage readers to subscribe to regular content updates, and make it as easy as possible for users to continue receiving and reading your content. These subscriptions can be through blog aggregators or emails.
- Utilize SlideShare
If you created a whitepaper, infographic or deck, insert it into your blog using Slideshare. By embedding it and then pushing out the blog address only, you will drive traffic to your blog and still provide visibility into your Slideshare presence. Some readers may go directly to Slideshare and happen along the file, but by doing both you will help drive traffic back to your blog in your integrated ecosystem.
- Make sharing easy with a sharing bar
Sharing bars are pretty popular. These bars are sticky to the header or footer area. Sharing bars really aren’t very different from having a set of sharing buttons at the bottom of the post, except for the fact that the bars follow users around the site and make it that much easier to share your content. Also, don't forget to pre-populate your share content. When people click a tweet button, they’re looking for the tweet to be pre-crafted. Do that for them so that they don’t have to. When you do pre-craft it, make sure your twitter username is included rather than just your blog name. This will help draw the social audience to you as well as amplify your blog post.
- Use Pinterest for galleries
Even if your readerbase is not primarily women or moms, Pinterest can be a great tool. One of the most common requests I get when building blogs is to include gallery capabilities. Pinterest does this for you and reduces the load time on your site, making your site faster. Make your album in Pinterest and then embed the full album on your post. You can also, of course, embed individual images if you want to do so.
- Visualize with Instagram
I love Instagram. It is quite possibly my favorite network right now. And ever since they started allowing embeds, it’s been even better. Just like Pinterest, you can embed individual images onto your blog. One reason you may choose to use Instagram over Pinterest is that sometimes you want a filtered photo or a photo that you took on the go.
- Meme-ify with Vine
Of course, I can’t talk about Instagram without talking about Vine. Vine is of course video only – so no pictures like Instagram. But Vine is also embeddable and is great for including on blog posts – particularly if your blog typically employs the use of memes and video.
- Interact with video
Speaking of video, if you’re not using video on your blog you’re missing an incredible opportunity. We all know YouTube allows embeds onto a website. Use it! Even better, use interactive video – instead of interviewing someone and then writing it out, consider doing the interview live and even having the audience partake in asking questions. It will drive website traffic and social traffic. Services like Spreecast and Google+ Hangouts on Air let the audience actively participate in the video if you let them.
- Leverage Facebook
Facebook had a big announcement recently. These images, taken from CNN.com, all show off Facebook’s new feature of allowing posts to be embedded on websites. Right now, only a few very select outlets can do this. But once it opens to the general public, I really hope you take full advantage of the capability.
- Integrate social with Twitter
Twitter already allows embedded posts. There are services, like Storify, that allow you to create full blog posts out of embedded tweets. However, if you want to just embed one tweet here and there, use the native Twitter capability to embed a single post. All you have to do is go to your tweet and click the more button to find the embed option. This can be easily integrated into your content by putting your call to action in your tweet and embedding the tweet at the bottom of the post. Then people can respond directly instead of having to separately go to Twitter to respond to you.
- Socialize comments
Make commenting easy! Don’t hide your comment area and don’t downplay it either. Make it very noticeable; call it out. Have a call for action and ask people a question that calls for a comment or ask users to tweet to you for more insights. Services like Livefyre and Disqus, which are plugins that can be easily added to your website if you use a content management system like Wordpress, let people “sign in” to socialize comments and drive social activity. These services also rank comments and the more relevant comments move up to the top. Generally speaking, using services like these make commenting easier for the user, increases the likelihood that they’ll sign up to be a part of your network and help reduce reader churn.
- Sign on with social
Finally, social sign on – this is incorporated into comment services like the ones I just mentioned. If you want people to sign onto your site, whether for comments or just to be a part of your blog community, don’t make people create a whole new user profile. Let people sign on with their social IDs. It's easier and more fluid for the user's general web experience and it increases opportunity for your content to be shared by the reader through the social network with which they connected.
So those are 14 different things to think about adding to your blog. It may seem like a lot – but don’t think that you have to go home or back to the office today and implement all the suggestions. Do what works for you, implement what works for you, and when you do, it can open up a whole new realm of possibilities for your blog.
View the presentation I gave during the 2013 Viralheat Blogathon on building a social blog on Slideshare: