Since social media is such a powerful tool for increasing the traffic to your blog, I’ve tried many different social media tips. Here are five of the best tips that have worked for my sites and our clients’ sites.
1. Befriend power users.
Power users are the users that exert the most influence on social media sites. These users regularly submit content that gets popular and they have many people that follow them.
Check out the popular content in your niche and see who is submitting them. You’ll often find a select group of people who submit the bulk of the popular content.
Vote for their stuff, send them interesting links, link to their site if they have one, guest post on their blog, interview them. Basically, do whatever you can to help them and get on their radar without being overbearing or obnoxious.
Once you’re developed a relationship with them, you can send them your best stuff and ask them to submit it if they like it.
2. Create more comprehensive content.
One of the things I started realizing is that much of the content that does well in social media is pretty comprehensive. The content was longer than your average post and it covered a subject with depth.
Therefore, I started creating longer posts filled with a lot of value and I’ve done better on social media sites as a result. Now each of your blog posts doesn’t have to be 1,500 words, but it’s a good idea to regularly publish longer, in-depth posts that stand out from the crowd of your typical 2oo-5oo word posts.
3. Add images and video to your best content.
Another thing that has worked out well has been adding multimedia to content. This is another thing I noticed about viral content. Much of this content is highlighted by images and video.
It only takes a little bit of time to go to sxc.hu or flickr.com and find relevant images that will improve your content.
And I think video is the next big thing in blogging. I know many people have made the same prediction that it seems cliche but it’s definitely true. More and more people are making web video a part of their routine. Many of us are already chronic TV watchers so it will only take time before we get used to watching videos on the web.
Therefore, if you have any video skills, use them! Also, the cost and learning barrier for producing videos has come down with discount equipment, software, and training courses. I’m actually trying an experiment of shifting one of my blogs to mostly video instead of text and seeing how that works.
4. Try niche social media sites.
Most bloggers just focus on the big general subject sites like Digg and StumbleUpon but there is a lot of opportunity in niche social media sites. Here’s a great list of these type of sites. These sites won’t send as much as traffic as the big general subject sites, but the quality of their traffic is often much higher. You’ll get a higher percentage of repeat visitors, a lower bounce rate, and more time spent on your site because of the more targeted traffic.
Also, it’s easier to network with the power users because of the smaller user base.
5. Use social media widgets at the end of each post.
Widgets are a great way to encourage your visitors to submit your content to social media sites. Visitors may like a post but without the prompting of a submission button, they won’t think to submit your content.
We added a StumbleUpon button on one blog and we’ve seen a big increase in submissions and traffic from StumbleUpon.
Performancing offers social media marketing services if you need help in this area.