5 Tips to Use Social Media to Increase Blog Traffic

We all need tips on how to use social media to increase our blog traffic and before sites like Facebook and Twitter took off, blog services like Blogger and WordPress were the cream of the Internet crop. Blogging is still popular today, and it's used by everyone from affiliate marketers to corporations looking to provide a personal look at their brand. However, blogs are a little more difficult to traffic, due to the fact that most social traffic is funneled to popular social sites.

With a little initiative you can use social media to drive traffic to your blog and ultimately receive a big boost in your rankings.

5 Easy and Effective Tips for Increasing Traffic through Social Sites

1: Develop Quality, Targeted Content

You can drive traffic to a blog, but the bigger goal is to get people interested in your blog. Thus you need high-quality, relevant material on your blog to keep your readers interested, to keep them subscribed, and to give people a reason to stick around and share your content. So, the first step in the traffic-driving process is to make sure you have the destination taken care of.

Create and maintain a blog that displays quality content on a regular basis. After you get your content situated, then you can begin figuring out how to use your social media presence to drive traffic to this destination.

2: Engage and Ask People to Do the Same

Here's where you begin to focus on blog traffic specifically. You should already be frequenting other blogs, commenting, and dropping your blog to organically improve your traffic through the blogosphere. That's Blogging 101. Now you have to engage people on social media and float your blog out there.

You can use Twitter and popular hashtags to drive your blog; you can use a variety of posts on Facebook, pictures on Instagram, and even videos on YouTube to promote your blog. What you're aiming for here is a popular, relevant, high-quality piece of content on a social site that's going to draw engagement. Your blog will be backlinked along with a call to action to ensure people click through.

3: Consistently Brand Across Your Platform

Make your blog a part of your overall brand presence. Having it as an afterthought will only guarantee that it remains an afterthought. For instance, when you add those social buttons for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and other social networks, don't forget to add a button for your blog. You want to display your blog as a legitimate part of your network.

Also mention your blog in the literature of your site(s), like in the “about” section, in the FAQ and/or customer support sections, etc. Make your blog a legitimate part of your social media marketing.

4: Promote Your Posts

A platform like Facebook, where the right type of paid advertising can reach a broad number of people, is perfect for blog promotion. You will use Sponsored Stories, Promoted Posts and other ad types to promote products, new promotions, and other business aspects. You can do the same with your blog.

There's always a caveat with any ad you create. There's always an equivalent to a “click here” link, and so your blog can always take the place of any other destination. Promoting a post that's promoting your blog will send it to more News Feeds and ensure more people see it.

5: Share Blog Updates on Social Sites

Making your blog a part of your overall network also means promoting your new posts when you put one up. Sending Twitter shout-outs, posting status updates on Facebook, informing your groups on LinkedIn – these are all great ways to tell people that there's a new post up. Don't rely on RSS feeds and the like. It's great to have them; you should have them. But you also want to inform people who aren't subscribed.

Provide a snippet of what the post is about, try to get people interested in reading the entire post, and then link them back to the actual blog.

In reality, promoting your blog and gaining traffic isn't at all different than using social media to promote anything else. The idea is to build an audience, captivate them with engaging material, and then institute a call to action that will lead to click-throughs.