How I Manage Social Media for My Blog

One part of blogging that is super important but that isn’t talked about a ton is social media. I spend just as much time trying to manage social media for my blog as I do actually writing the posts. But I’ve been doing this for nearly 6 years and have pretty much got this thing mastered, so I figured I would share my tips and tricks, as well as the social media management tools I use. I hope that, whether you’re a brand new blogger or you have been doing this for a while, this helps you be a better blogger!

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Why social media matters for bloggers (and how to grow yours!)

Ways I Manage Social Media for My Blog

I want to start by talking about what I mean by “managing social media.” I’m talking about having a social media strategy, scheduling posts, spending time focusing on social media even when it’s not directly related to my blog, etc. This can be broken into 2 buckets: promoting blog posts on social media and working on growing my social media, both in terms of followers and in terms of building a Kate the (Almost) Great community.

Promoting blog posts – I’m not going to go super in depth with this because I’ve written an entire post about how I promote my blog posts, but I do want to cover some of the ways I use social media for blog posts. 1) When I have a new post, I schedule social media posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest to promote the new post. 2) On Twitter and Facebook, I also schedule social media posts promoting older blog posts. I sit down every couple of months and schedule 1 post promoting 1 different blog post every day for 2ish months. This brings attention the my posts that might get lost, as I have over 1,000 blog posts. 3) I’m also a member of multiple Facebook groups for bloggers, in which I promote my new posts.

How I promote my blog posts | The Benefits of a Social Media Editorial Calendar

Growing social media – Social media is a great way to get blog traffic, but that’s really only true if you have a real following online. That means that I work on growing my social media networks and building a community with them. But I have a job and multiple chronic illnesses (which are a job in of themselves), so I can’t spend all day on social media. This means that I spend several hours over the weekend scheduling a week’s worth of social media posts that aren’t promotions of my blog posts. For every day on Twitter and Facebook, I schedule a promotion of someone else’s blog posts, an inspirational quote, and a question. This helps my feed not be all posts about my blog posts only. (No one wants to follow someone on Twitter who only ever posts about their own blog.) It also helps build relationships with other bloggers and people following me.

8 tips to get more Twitter followers | Why you need a social media content calendar

My Favorite Social Media Management Tools

Buffer – I use Buffer to schedule Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn posts. With the subscription that I have, I can schedule up to 100 posts on each network (aka 300 posts total, not 100 across the 3). What I really like about it is you can look at your scheduled posts in a list or in a calendar format. I made the switch to Buffer when Hootsuite changed their subscriptions; if I stayed with them, I would pay more for less. I pay $102 a year and can use up to 10 networks. Overall, I think that’s a really awesome deal.

How to use Twitter for bloggers

Tailwind – I use Tailwind to schedule my Pinterest posts and I LOVE it! Basically, I schedule 90% of my Pinterest traffic in advance. I go on Pinterest itself, search for various topics, and add them to my Tailwind queue. I also schedule Pinterest promotions of my blog posts through Tailwind. What I love about that feature is that I can schedule posts to multiple boards and schedule the posts to be spread out over time, and there’s a button to schedule the posts at the best time for your posts. Additionally, something that has brought a lot of traffic for me is their service called Tailwind Tribes. Basically, these are like Pinterest group boards, but they’re only available in Tailwind. Additionally, a lot of them are monitored more than Facebook groups are, so if someone isn’t participating according to the rules, they can get kicked out of the group. In my experience, this makes people participate me.

9 reasons why Tailwind is worth the money | How to use Pinterest for blogging | How to get the most out of Tailwind for Pinterest

Facebook scheduler – While I use Buffer for a lot of Facebook posts, I also use the Facebook page post scheduler. This is because, after a huge Facebook breach, Facebook basically cut off some connection with third-party sites like Buffer. I’m able to schedule normal posts (posts without links, posts with links, etc.) but I’m unable to tag other accounts, pages, etc. Being able to tag to other pages is important for me because that’s part of why I share other people’s posts: to build relationships with them. Additionally, when I have sponsored Facebook posts, I have to schedule them in Facebook itself because I can’t use the Branded Content Tool in other scheduling sites like Buffer, and that tool is required when using a sponsored post. It’s especially required because it’s the only tool that would also give promoting abilities to the people on the page that I’m tagging. Overall, the Branded Content Tool is required for a lot of sponsored posts.

Preview app – This is the app I use to schedule my Instagram posts. There are a couple of things I like about it. 1) You can look at how your potential new post will look in your feed before you post it. This is super helpful when trying to build a cohesive feed. 2) It will store groups of hashtags for you so you can easily add them to your post, and it counts how many hashtags you have used so you don’t go over 30. (For those of you who don’t know, Instagram won’t let you use more than 30 hashtags.) 3) It will also help you find hashtags to use based on topics.

How do you manage social media for your blog?

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