After reading thousands of blogs during my 9 year blogging career I spot patterns.
Successful bloggers master the principle of leveraging.
If you look at Blogging From Paradise – my blog – for a minute you see I give readers plenty of opportunities to join my list and to comment on my blog posts.
Email list traffic is traffic on demand; perhaps the ultimate form of leveraging. Blog commentators add credibility and content to my blog, both leveraging traffic builders. Social media tools fall into this category as well, such as an Instagram growth service which can be easily utilized to drive more organic traffic and increase the number of followers.
Making it easy for readers to share my posts on social media is another powerful leveraging agent. If someone reads my post and enjoys the content they will share it on Twitter or Facebook or Google Plus. Or perhaps they will share the post on all networks, leveraging the stuffing out of my blogging presence, helping me appear to be in a million places at once.
Unfortunately, a striking number of bloggers ignores this most powerful word of mouth marketing medium, good old social media sharing.
This crowd leaves a jaw-dropping amount of social media traffic on the table with every blog post.
Today I want to share 3 ways you are missing out on social media traffic and how to remedy these egregious errors.
1: No Social Sharing Buttons
This is the most silly boo boo out there.
Many bloggers totally neglect adding social media sharing buttons to their blog.
This completely baffles me because unless someone wants to go above and beyond to copy and paste a blog post link to social media, you will get little social media traffic which is a recipe for trouble for all but the most established bloggers.
Do you want to rely on Google alone for your traffic? I adore blog commenting and guest posting but I’d be a fool not to add social sharing buttons to my blog posts.
Give readers a chance to share your content easily on social media and they will gladly share your content, boosting your blog traffic in the process.
2: Not Linking to Your Twitter Handle via Your Tweet Button
This is a major league boo-boo that I see way too often.
Bloggers may have their sharing buttons set up and even prominent but neglecting to add your Twitter handle leaves some social media traffic on the table.
You may get a RT but you will not get the follower boost that you deserve.
Hop into your blog backoffice. Check your social sharing plugin settings. Add your Twitter handle. Doing so increases your follower count which helps boost your social media blog traffic too.
If fellow bloggers can find you on Twitter and love your content they will retweet you to their readerships, further increasing your reach on the platform.
3: Not Promoting Other Bloggers on Social Media
One of my all time worst social media errors was not promoting other bloggers on my social media sites.
This one has most bloggers flummoxed, as I literally see steam flowing out of their ears because they are hyper obsessed with taking care of themselves first before taking care of other people. Bad move.
I was that guy for many years online. I literally left tens of thousands of social media shares on the table because I only promoted me, in my own little echo chamber, taking care of myself but never RTing or Facebook Sharing any other bloggers.
Since I only cared about myself, nobody else cared about me. This is how social media marketing tends to work.
But when I began promoting other bloggers generously a bunch of these folks became my blogging buddies. My blogging buddies Facebook Shared my blog posts and eBooks and courses. Said friends RTed my posts and shared my blog on LinkedIn and G Plus.
Now I live by this mantra; give freely, receive easily. Give freely of your social media streams. Watch how quickly other bloggers promote you on social media.
Be generous. Be social. Drive a steadily increasing flow of social media traffic through your blog.
Your Turn
How are you driving social media traffic to your blog?
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