I’m sure you’ve contemplated starting a blog for a long time. You have drooled over beautiful blogs that are established and thought to yourself, ‘hey I’d like to try that some day!’ You decide that you are not going to say some day one more time! You are going to go for it! You spend months perfecting the look of your blog, writing engaging content, and getting your site up and running. Now you’re ready to launch your blog, and NOW the work begins! It can be very overwhelming to know where to start promoting your blog. Below we have included some ideas to get you started on the right path.
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Social media marketing has been my primary vehicle to promote our blog to the readers. Specifically, we try to focus on Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram. These platforms are incredible for getting your blog out to readers, but they can also be very time-consuming. We have encountered some helpful tips and tricks to utilize these platforms while protecting time to create meaningful posts for your readers.
Pinterest is an excellent platform to bring many readers to your site. Your posts will become evergreen, meaning that the older posts will remain in front of your readers’ eyes each time they visit the pin. Pinterest is a search engine; make sure you do research on keywords that are searched most often. If I’m writing a post about flower arrangements, I will type in flower arrangements in the search box on Pinterest in order to see what other words pop up below. These become the words I will then include in my descriptions. I learned SO much about Pinterest from Megan Johnson. If you want more in-depth information she has an excellent book that explains Pinterest, Facebook and more called Pinterest Ninjas.
Make certain you create vertical pins (we like 735X1102) that are eye-catching. We use Canva, which is a FREE website that assists you in creating beautiful pins! Once you’ve created the pins, you need to schedule them throughout the day, along with other bloggers’ pins. For scheduling, we recommend Tailwind because not only will they schedule the pins, they will suggest the best time of day to pin! An additional benefit is Tailwind allow you to try out the service free for one month.
When we started Food, Flowers, and Festivities, we didn’t completely understand hashtags or how to use them. Fast forward to the present, and we have certainly come a long way from where we started! For example, if we post a picture that features a Mario cake, we then need to generate thirty hashtags that relate to a Mario cake! You do not want to select hashtags that are overused or extremely popular; you will not be found! It can be very time-consuming to research hashtags, so make sure you take the help from multiple reliable resources. With Tailwind hashtag finder 2.0, you will encounter suggested hashtags under the description of your picture as you type! If you’re not satisfied with the first round of suggested hashtags, you can click for an additional group of suggested hashtags! A helpful tool on Tailwind is the ability to hover over hashtags to determine how popular a hashtag is. We appreciate the color-coding of suggested hashtags–light and dark green indicate strong hashtags and orange-colored hashtags are common hashtags you may want to avoid using.
You can auto-post during the most popular times with Instagram! In other words, we can create the content on our own schedule but post it when most readers are on Instagram. Additionally, you can do this work from Tailwind on your computer instead of the tedious task of typing on your phone. Like Pinterest, you can try Instagram scheduling for free here.
Create a professional looking Facebook page, and post updates when you decide to announce a new post or tip. Facebook is an incredible strategy to bring in blog traffic. We encourage you to connect with other blogging groups. Participants are eager to help you and in turn, you can assist group members. Find a great list of beneficial Facebook groups in Megan’s Pinterest Ninja book here. Megan also has a robust Facebook group called Pinterest Ninjas, and I started a group called Instagram Creative Creators.
Please let me know if you have any questions. Happy Blogging!
Hi Nikki,
Thank you for this very useful blog post – it really made social media marketing seem very easy and doable :). I’m looking forward to trying it out once I’ve launched my blog!
Best, Anni
Thanks! Great to hear this Anni. Let me know if you have any questions.