While you can have social media without a blog, you really can’t have a blog without social media. Social media is how you grow your brand and how most people find your blog. But if you want to use social media for your blog, you can’t treat social media like your non-content creator friends do. Marketing with social media is a different kind of beast. With that in mind, I’m sharing social media tips for bloggers, including tips for writing for social media.

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Social Media Tips for Bloggers 

I have so many social media tips and tricks for you guys, and some of these things apply to all bloggers. But by and large, every blog is a little bit different. Let’s talk about how to figure out what is and isn’t ideal for you and your blog.

The first thing you need to do is to figure out how much traffic social media brings to your blog. That way, you know where your starting point is, and where you need to work harder. How do you do this? Google Analytics. 

In Google Analytics, go to the “Acquisitions” tab. Then click “All Traffic,” and then “Source/Medium.” This view shows all sources of traffic, and it will list different countries’ versions of social media as separate sources. 

What’s helpful about this list is that it not only shows what sites are sending you traffic, but also the type of traffic. That list might include, for example, “/ referral” and “/ social” after listing the website. That describes the type of traffic, so if a website refers someone to your website or if a website is a sort of social media.

This shows you where you’re succeeding and, by lack of inclusion, where you’re struggling. So if your list primarily shows Google searches or Twitter clicks but it doesn’t show Pinterest, then you need to work on your Pinterest. 

How To Track Blog Traffic in Google Analytics

Now that you know where you need to work, let’s talk about social media tips for bloggers in general.

First and foremost, let’s talk about social media for promoting your blog. 

When I have a new post, I schedule social media posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest to promote the new post on that day and over the course of the next few weeks.

Whenever I have a new post, I schedule 7 tweets and 4 Facebook posts spread out over the course of 24 hours to promote it. I schedule so many posts because social media posts (especially for Twitter) have a very short shelf-life and it’s easy for posts to get lost in the shuffle. By sharing my posts frequently across the course of a day, more people are likely to see my posts, no matter what timezone they’re in. 

From looking at my Google Analytics, I know that the vast majority of my pageviews come from the United States – where I am – and 37% of American pageviews come from my timezone. I know that 37% looks like a small number, but that’s a good thing! It means that posting promotional tweets across the day and planning for other timezones is working. 

I also want to highlight that I schedule my promotional Facebook posts to be in between my promotional Twitter posts to cover as much time as possible. 

Additionally, even when I don’t have a new post, I promote a post every single day. I use the same schedule for these posts as I do for when I have new posts. This works because I’ve been blogging for 8+ years, and I’ve written over 1,000 posts, so I have a lot to choose from. But even if you haven’t been blogging that long, I suggest promoting blog posts even on days when you don’t have new posts. 

How to promote a blog post

I also really recommend having and using a social media editorial calendar. 

For 5+ years, I meticulously planned and scheduled the social media for my blog. I stopped doing it because I didn’t really see a point, but then at the end of 2020 I started doing it again. And I’m so glad I did! My traffic from social media increased when I did this, as did engagement with my posts. 

This involves intentionally planning out social media posts for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. I do this in a Google Sheet (1 per month) with one tab per social media network, and then I schedule out my social media in Buffer and Tailwind. 

This helps me be more intentional with what I’m sharing and make sure I’m not sharing the same posts multiple times in one month. I share other people’s posts to help build community. I share inspirational quotes so others interact with my content and so I’m not only sharing links to my posts. I also ask questions to build community as well as to not solely share links to my posts.

​​Additionally, I now use my editorial calendars to help track whether or not I’ve made new pins for older blog posts. I make these new pins in Tailwind with Tailwind Create, and then I schedule Pinterest posts in Tailwind. This is Tailwind’s tool for making new images. You add a link to a post, the title, choose some photos (including from stock images they have), and it makes a bunch of images. You choose the ones you like and download or directly schedule them! Pinterest really gives attention to new pins for old(er) posts, so making new pins is crucial. 

Best Social Media for Bloggers: How To Manage Your Social Media

I also schedule my Instagram posts with Tailwind.

For years, I used apps that would send me a notification so I could automatically copy a picture and a caption to Instagram and then post them. However, I can’t usually be on Instagram during the day because I’m busy with my “day job”. As far as I know, Tailwind for Instagram is the only app that enables you to post directly to your Instagram while you’re not on your phone.

There are a few exceptions. 1) If you post what’s called a carousel, aka multiple images in 1 post, you can only choose a notification post. 2) If you want to schedule posting to your stories, you have to use a notification post. Otherwise, it can auto-post to Instagram while you’re not even on your phone.

How I manage social media for my blog 

I also want to look at things you can do for your blog’s social media that you can set and forget, most of which are plugins. 

Advanced Recent Post is a “Plugin that shows the recent posts with thumbnails in the widget and in other parts of the your blog or theme with shortcodes” (ARP). So if you scroll to the bottom of this post and see suggested posts after the text of the post, that’s this plugin working.

Better Click to Tweet is a plugin that enables you to “Add Click to Tweet boxes simply and elegantly to your posts or pages.” (BCTT). That’s what that tweet is up there! I use this plugin in most posts. 

The Instagram Feed plugin “Display[s] beautifully clean, customizable, and responsive Instagram feeds” (IF). This is the plugin I use to display recent Instagram posts over in my sidebar.

The jQuery Pin It Button for Images plugin “Highlights images on hover and adds a “Pin It” button over them for easy pinning” (jQPITFI). As I’ve insinuated in this post, Pinterest is vital for every blogger, so you want to make it easy for your readers to pin. That’s where this plugin comes in.

Learn more about my $10 ebook for health bloggers.

Revive Old Posts is a “WordPress plugin that helps you to [keep] your old posts alive by sharing them and driving more traffic to them from twitter/facebook or linkedin. It also helps you to promote your content. You can set time and no. of posts to share to drive more traffic” (ROP). I especially love this plugin! I genuinely don’t think about this plugin unless I see a post shared by the plugin.

Finally, I want to discuss Missinglettr. Missinglettr is a tool that lets you set up an automated set of social media posts, and I learned about this resource from taking the Ramp up your visibility by getting your blog posts in front of waaaay more people course. The free plan gives you 1 social media network and 50 scheduled posts at any given time. 

I started using Missinglettr about a year ago, and since then I’ve gotten 1,342 clicks to my blog from Twitter. That is a ton, especially because I didn’t know Missinglettr existed in September 2020.

The best WordPress plugins

Writing for Social Media: Tips and Tricks

Draft somewhere other than the social media network – Don’t write your content directly in the site’s new post field! If you’re going to quickly post a thought, go for it. Those are perfect for situations like Twitter and Instagram Stories. But when it comes to writing out a week’s worth of social media, don’t directly draft in the social media site. 

Use the Notes app, use a Google doc, use something else entirely. (I’m currently typing this in a Google doc and will later move it over to my blog!) It doesn’t really matter where as long as it’s not somewhere that you can accidentally click “post” and have it, well, post. 

The point is to give yourself some space. Whether it be a typo or a change of heart on the subject matter, you want space to fix anything necessary. 

The Blog Tools I Use and Love

Use a free character counter to make sure you don’t go over – While this isn’t as big of an issue nowadays – Twitter famously increased their max-characters allowed to 280 a few years ago – you still need to make sure that you include important information before a “Read more” button appears. 

This is for a couple of reasons. One reason is that if you’re sharing sponsored content, in the United States you have to include a disclosure before the rest of the content is hidden by a “Read more” button. If someone has to click “Read more” in order to see a disclosure, you’re doing it wrong.

Another reason to use a free character counter is that a lot of people won’t click a “Read more” button. So if you’re going to write something long enough that there will be a “Read more” button, you need to put the most important information above that button.

Your Guide to Making and Using a Media Kit as a Blogger

Frequently use images with your posts – I know this section is about writing for social media, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention images. By and large, images help your social media posts stand out. 

Hootsuite says that on Facebook, “photo posts see much higher engagement than text posts” (x). Twitter says that “Bold images, GIFs, and videos add a touch of personality and increase results” (x). 

You don’t necessarily need images in every single post, and plenty of my tweets without images have done well. But when it comes to click-throughs, images are key. 

12 Tips for New Health Bloggers

Use/make images that are optimized for that network – Yes, images are good for most social media networks, but not all images are good for all networks. You don’t want them to be too big or too small or too oddly shaped. 

Hootsuite has a cheat sheet of the best images for different networks, which is really helpful. For example, the minimum size an image should be in Twitter is 600×335 pixels, but the best size is 1600×1900 pixels. 

The best thing to do, in my opinion, is just use Canva. Canva has a free plan, so you don’t need to pay to access incredible resources. But the most important thing about Canva is that all you have to do is select the type of image you want to make – pin, tweet, Facebook post, Instagram post, etc. – and they give you a properly-proportioned image to make. 

50+ Incredible Free Blog Resources

Don’t use hashtags the same way for every platform – It’s important to know that hashtags don’t work the same for every platform. For Instagram, you should use at least 25 hashtags, and the limit is 30. For Twitter and Facebook, you should only use them if they’re really important, and then you should only include 1 or 2. 

A good rule for Twitter and Facebook is that you should only use a hashtag for 2 or more words put together because, when it’s 1 word, people can just search and find that word. For example, if you search arthritis and #arthritis, you’ll generally get the same search results. But searching #RheumatoidArthritis will get you much better results than searching “rheumatoid arthritis”. 

Another point is that, when you use hashtags – especially in a sentence – you should capitalize the first letter of each word within the hashtag. This is so screen readers read a hashtag as 2 separate words instead of some sort of soup. (The American Foundation for the Blind explains that “Screen readers are software programs that allow blind or visually impaired users to read the text that is displayed on the computer screen with a speech synthesizer or braille display.” (x)) 

The Dos and Dont’s of How To Get Your Blog Noticed

Schedule your posts in advance – I know that at this point in this post you guys aren’t surprised by me saying this, but schedule your social media posts in advance of when they should be posted. 

Scheduling means you can spend an hour or two at a time scheduling your social media and then you don’t have to think about them again for a while. Whether you’re a full-time blogger, a hobby blogger, or somewhere in between, no one has the time to post all of your social media in real time. At least, not if you’re posting on social at the frequency you should be posting.

Scheduling your posts also enables you to create a cohesive brand. Instead of posting various things on different networks that don’t have anything to do with one another, you can connect your posts across networks by planning and scheduling ahead of time. On the other hand, you want to ensure that you don’t post the same thing across networks at the same time, which then defeats the purpose of writing different content. 

Why Isn’t My Blog Getting Traffic?

At the end of the day, posting on social media when you’re a blogger is way more complicated than people realize. It’s all doable, though, and I hope that this post helps you get a better grasp on it. 

Like this post? Share it! Then check out: 

What I Would Do If I Started a Blog Today, How To Be a Health Blogger: Writing Blog Posts, Getting Smart with an Editorial Calendar for Bloggers + Free Editorial Calendar, Why I Switched to MailerLite from MailChimp for My Email Newsletter