Blogging is one of the greatest ways to drive traffic to your website. There are many, many statistics that show how blogging will help your business.
Here are a few:
70% of customers learn about a company through articles rather than ads.
Companies that blog have 80% more traffic than companies that don’t.
Small businesses that blog generate 126% more traffic than companies that don’t.
Now that you’re convinced about the benefits of blogging, we’ll show you how to use the power of social media to drive traffic to your blog.
1. Mention Those Referenced In The Post
This is something called an ego post. Basically, if you reference any other companies or writers in your post, give them an @mention in the social media post. In most cases this will prompt them to throw a like or share/retweet on the post, giving you some major exposure. Make sure not to overuse this strategy by doing it week after week, otherwise it could feel like spam and you’ll lose the benefits.
2. Use Related Posts To Promote Your Own
What you want to do here is find related posts by other authors, retweet them and then mention your own post. You can also do this with tools you blog about. An example would be: @AmazingHammers just updated their tool, we’ve updated our guide on it as well, check it out here: www.example.url. This can be a powerful way to attract attention to your new posts as well as some of your older ones if you update them as I mentioned in the example.
3. Use Stats, Studies, and Charts
People love some data. In fact, studies show that articles with digits in the name are 175% more likely to be shared. Any time you can create a post with statistics, studies, charts, or lists, go for it. It will pay off. If you do have a chart or graph, try to share that with your social media post. That way your followers can get more value without having to leave the social media network.
4. Co-Author Posts
Co-Authoring posts can be one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your blog; especially, if you co-author with someone who has a large following. Let me give you an example of how this will work.
Say you’ve got 5k followers and your co-author has 5k followers, you’re doubling your potential audience. You can co-create a post by doing all the work and letting another author take credit in exchange for his audience. Or, you could reach out to another author and have him come up with the layout while you do all the work, or vice versa.
5. Re-Tweet everyone who shares your post.
This is a great way to build good will with your existing followers and gain new ones. Monitor this activity in your notifications and watch for someone to retweet you and then retweet them. Just make sure you watch out for spam bots. Retweeting those can be very damaging to your brand.
6. Turn Your Title Into Question
Questions are a great way to spark interaction with your followers. Turning the title of your article into a question will pique interest and hopefully drive some traffic to your post. This is a very simple technique that can yield some good results, so definitely take advantage of it.
7. Ask For Participation
Social Media posts that ask for participation can be a really good way to gain exposure. Here’s an example.
Let’s say you’re writing an article with two competing points of view on the topic. When you promote the post in social media you’d write: Retweet for premise one, favorite for premise two. This should spark some interaction in your post.
8. Share Content From The Post
When you’re doing a promotional post for one of your blog articles, it’s important to know which information to share and which to leave in the article. The best thing is to share a quote or some statistics from your post. As we mentioned earlier, people love the numbers. This will give you the highest chance of a click through.
9. Re-Share Post When Related News Comes Out
Sometimes a topic you write about may not be popular at the time of publishing, but that same topic could see a surge of popularity later on. Don’t be afraid to take advantage of this and share your post once the topic takes off. Even if it’s something you’ve written about a year before.
10. Promote The Comment Discussion
If you have a good comment discussion going on around your article, post about it! A healthy comment discussion is a sign of a good blog. Social media is all about user interaction. This will really help drive users to your blog.
Conclusion
All of these methods will really improve the traffic on your blog. Even if you don’t have a large following on social media, a lot of these, such as co-authoring will still work very well. Happy blogging!