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Do you use FB to promote your blog?

15 replies

MmeLindor · 06/11/2012 21:45

And if you have, have you noticed a fall in traffic recently?

I have noticed that I am not seeing the blog posts from those I am following on FB appear in my timeline. This is not 'news' really, as FB introduced a new way of promoting posts this year, and there has been a lot of talk about the drop in organic hits to blog posts.

this blog post explains it well

I am wondering what other options there are. I am using Google+ but not as much as FB and Twitter (cause at some point I run out of hours in the day).

How can we ensure that we are still reading each other's blogs and sharing them. I follow too many people on Twitter and even with lists I am missing blog posts.

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pebbles77 · 06/11/2012 21:55

I'm marking my place as I'm afraid I don't know the answer but would like to!

I hate finding a blog again that I was following but hadn't been reminded of my fb for a while and following on email is ok but I find in the morning it's just too many to read and I'm not able to click through all of them.

Would love to know what you think of Google+ - I haven't started yet but am thinking of doing it?

Thanks

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MmeLindor · 06/11/2012 22:10

I keep starting to use Google+ and then forgetting about it. I have asked Nickie to come along and talk to us about it, cause she is much more knowledgeable about it.

My favourite site is Twitter, and I really liked FB for blog promotion (and small business promotion but it is getting really difficult now.

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peekyboo · 06/11/2012 22:23

I use it but only started recently so have nothing to compare it to. I wonder how you encourage more people to click on the links to the blog as most of my visitors prefer to stay on the FB page and read the tiny snippets I post there.
Is the answer that all my blog posts should be no more than 5 lines long?

As for Google_, at some stage the IT teen signed us up for it so I am in that, but have had very little of use from it. When the blog first started, I got a few whatever-you-call-thems from Google+, then nothing. Seems hit and miss.

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Typecast · 06/11/2012 22:26

Hey there - long time no see Smile Thanks to MmeLindor for giving me a nudge about this thread.

IMHO Social media is changing all the time. Free platforms need to make money somewhere - I mean, why would they provide a popular service to everyone and not want to profit from it?

Facebook is the main culprit at the moment and I'm just getting my head around "edge rank". This is basically what Mme's link is about - your post will only be seen by the people who Facebook believe it is relevant to. They have their own algorithm for that and you can only extend the "reach" if you pay. Bad news all round basically, especially if you don't have the time or the inclination to invest in "professional" social media promotion. If you don't have a facebook page for your blog now then don't bother starting one.

Again with Facebook, using third party apps to promote your blog posts (eg. networked blogs) is going to take away some of your edge rank (visibility) too. The best thing to do is to be YOU on Facebook (your profile or your page if you have one) and post links manually. There is great discussion at the moment about whether you should try and promote your posts with an image - after all... isn't that what Pinterest is about? But then someone pointed out the other day that their Facebook feed was all pictures and pictures-with-words-on and crap - she just wanted to interact with people with actual typed words. And there - right there - is your audience feedback.

There has been a recommended app to use called IFTTT ifttt.com/ - but I haven't used it as I'm trialing the manual approach at the moment which seems to be working for me. However, you have to find out what works for you - especially when time is a massive issue for us all.

Twitter, for me, is like MSN on speed. They only people that will see your updates are those who are there at the same time as you OR those who actually scroll back when they come on line OR those who have you on a twitter list (worth looking into btw). In my mind, if you want to promote your blog then do so regularly. It's recommended to do it three times a day but I say more. You can schedule tweets with Tweetdeck or Hootsuite so you can promo even when you're not there. It takes 2 mins to schedule five tweets.

But G+ is the BIG thing for me at the moment. I love it over there. I'm finding a brand new audience and the stream is a lot "quieter". Depending on who you follow and what circles you group people into determines what you see in your live stream as you can "mute" certain circles, you can tag full circles so that people are alerted to your posts but the MOST important thing is that SEO is built into your Google+ posts automatically the more you post on there, the more chance you have of having your posts and updates seen on Google searches.

A +1 is like a recommendation. Your influence pushes it up the google search rankings a little bit. A share gives it even more of a boost. If you apply for Google authorship plus.google.com/authorship your recommendations have even more weight. You can create a Google Plus Page for your blog/brand/business and currently this has more SEO built into it BUT it's not necessary. I personally post and share and recommend in my own name because that's what I want to be recognised - however, for anonymity reasons or separation issues or whatever - some people want to concentrate on their pages rather than their personal profiles. Setting up a page is slightly more time consuming to start off with (and you need a G+ personal profile to start off with) but I have seen a few blogs and brands grow enormously.

At the end of the day - this is all only relative if you have the time to invest into it. Once everything is set up, it only takes a few minutes a day but you have to be a communicator and conversationalist (responsive) rather than a broadcaster (updates only). But if you blog for the love of writing/blogging and don't want to get involved in all the social media promotional side of things then that's fine too.

Hope that helps.

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MmeLindor · 06/11/2012 22:31

That is incredibly helpful, thanks.

See - I get frustrated by google+ cause it is so boring. It doesn't move fast enough, but then I am a big Twitter fan so that is why.

I am going to use it more because I think that it will grow, especially when people start to look for an alternative to FB.

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pebbles77 · 06/11/2012 22:59

Wow typecast - where have you been all my life? Thank you so so much for all this info. Off I trot to get myself a Google+ account
Thanks

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MmeLindor · 07/11/2012 18:41

Pebbles
Check out Typecast's blog Geekalicious for fab blogging tips.

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Typecast · 07/11/2012 20:44

Thanks for the "other blog" recommendation Mme - I didn't want to pimp it out yesterday as it's not registered on the MN Blogger network.

Pebbles - you're welcome Smile

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pebbles77 · 07/11/2012 21:06

Oh brilliant, off I trot to Geekalicious :) - great name by the way

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FrenchMamma · 13/11/2012 11:29

I use FB to promote my blog posts and it drives a ton of traffic to my blog regularly.

Once or twice a month, I promote a post so people don't forget about me. If I'm not normally in their feed, I am after I do this. It drives more people to my page and I get more comments and likes, increasing interaction. When this happens, there's no need to promote because I think if your page is very active, FB will show it in more feeds. Now that I have over 900 likes and good interaction, I'm hoping I will not have to promote as often.

I was adding my posts automatically on FB and stopped with my last post. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or not, but manually posting it, I received more traffic than ever before. So I think Typecast is right about that, it's better to do it manually. I wish I knew that earlier!

Out of 900 fans, I got 72 clicks on a post I posted late afternoon on a Sunday (which was really not a good time, but I couldn't wait to go live with it!). Then 61 people clicked on it on Monday. I hope to really increase this number, even though I don't think it's too bad. If only FB wouldn't filter us out! People liked my page to receive blog post updates. But it's a great way for FB to earn money - make us promote our posts.

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CraftsonSea · 13/11/2012 13:47

Brill advice Typecast, thank you (and your site helped me a while ago so you are, basically, fab). My problem is how do I market my blog to 'normal' non social media types? I know people who follow mine on facebook who would never do twitter and would have no idea what-so-ever about google+ (and in fairness I don't have much of an idea either!) do you recommend trying to get people to email subscribe? the facebook thing is such a shame, for the little while it worked it was working really well for my blog!

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Typecast · 15/11/2012 16:20

I have taken a screenshot of the "you are, basically, fab" quote. Grin

I am really pushing the email sub at the moment - although if you write good content and don't mind pushing that out on your personal facebook profile then people will want to bookmark your content and return to read more.

I'm a "follower by email" of other blogs and will click through to leave a comment so there's no reason that other's shouldn't. However, I do think that bloggers will comment on other blogs. Non-bloggers won't. It's as simple as that. Some of my most read post hardly have any comments on them at all.

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Tee2072 · 15/11/2012 20:01

This is why I use Netvibes as my Blog Reader. It keeps me up to date with the bloggers I read and I can either read them within the reader or click to go straight to their site. I still follow a lot of FB Blog Pages, but there is indeed no guarantee FB will actually put it on your feed. Cheeky people! I swear even they don't understand how their algorithm works any more!

I find Google+ really unwieldy and barely use it.

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pebbles77 · 15/11/2012 22:24

I've found this which could be quite useful for us who use Facebook

www.tots100.co.uk/2012/11/08/how-to-boost-your-blog-facebook-page-despite-edgerank/

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HanSolo · 02/12/2012 00:09

I find it interesting that people find G+ slow moving... my feed is too fast to follow in any depth tbh- maybe it's the people in our circles that differ so much? (am techy)

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