How to promote your blog posts using social media and ensure they get engagement.

Are you looking to get more traffic to your blog posts?  Promoting your blog posts on your social channels will help deliver a steady stream of visitors to your blog, but first let's remember the #1 rule with posting blogs on social:  You need to tailor content to fit the appropriate social channel in order for this to be successful. 

In this article, we have listed some tips that will help you successfully cross-promote your blog posts on top social media platforms:

• Facebook - put the essence of your blog into at least 480 characters, however, 50 or less characters tends to be more engaging.

  • Upload a photo that is visually appealing instead of using the link preview.

  • Add personal and engaging content that invites a reader to leave a reply.

  • Consider promoting for optimal reach.

• Twitter - pose a question where the answer can be found in the blog by clicking the link.

  • Use up to four hashtags to make your content more searchable and to generate more reactions.

  • Add a call to action to promote engagement.

• LinkedIn (Slideshare) - on your company page, keep content around your blog to 150 characters so that users do not need to click “read more” to get more information.

  • Sharing with an image works best on LinkedIn.

• Pinterest - remember that your image is the most important part of your pin, and should represent the content you are looking to have seen.

  • You are allowed up to 500 characters to describe and comment on your images, however, keep the description between 150 and 300 to help convince users to click on the content.

  • Collect images in albums to sort them by topic.

  • Include searchable keywords as hashtags, as with Instagram, this will allow as many users as possible to find your post!

  • You can post images of any size.

  • To promote a blog, add a link to your pin descriptions.

  • Add a call to action to encourage users to engage.

• Instagram- most interaction with an image post on Instagram takes place within the first few hours of posting (much shorter than on Pinterest).
  • Your image MUST be in a square format (1080 x 1080 pixels is ideal). 
  • Limit your caption to 155 characters.  On Instagram, captions can be up to 2,200 characters, of which only the first three lines are displayed in the news feed, however to expand that post, users have to click the More link, as a result, try limiting your caption to 155 characters.
  • Select the keywords from your blog post and use them as hashtags.  This provides a quick and easy way for Instagram users to find your post. You are allowed up to 30 hashtags.
  • Because Instagram does not display clickable links, you will need to add a URL in your caption or point users to the URL in your profile to send followers to your blog.

Happy promoting!