Integrating Social Media with Blog Writing to Grow Leads

Although many business owners think that social media and blogging are two separate entities altogether, the truth is quite the opposite. In fact, the quote “content is fire and social media is gasoline” rings especially true. Your content is the main place you want your audience to end up, but your social media is what helps it to spread like wildfire. The two must work together in order for the entire process to be efficient.

Blogging and social media are such critical complements that sometimes it’s important to step back and see again just how well they work together. We’re going to address a few of the ways to really integrate your social media with blog writing to grow leads and generate traffic.

One of the most successful social media tactics is curating other bloggers’ and media sites’ content. So, of course, you would do this for yourself as well. All social media content should be about 80:20–that is, 80% curated content and 20% created content (or curating yourself).

If you’re curating content correctly and tagging the blogger or media site whose content you’re sharing, you’re likely to grow your following and engagement. Take advantage of that following and send them to your content as well.

Twitter has recently given users the option to literally retweet their past tweets, but that’s not exactly what we mean with this strategy. Using a tool like Buffer or Meet Edgar, you can surf through your past tweets and repurpose them as a new tweet.

Since the lifespan of a tweet is only about 18 minutes, it’s likely that the majority of your audience didn’t even see it the first time around. And if you space your retweets out appropriately, it’s likely that those who did aren’t going to remember your exact wording.

So make your social media sharing easy on yourself, and every few weeks, go back and re-share some of your old tweets.

If you don’t have social sharing buttons on your blog content, then you’re seriously lacking in your blog’s potential for earned traffic. Earned traffic is traffic that has been directed to your website through social shares of your blog posts, as opposed to owned traffic (directed from your own social channels) or paid traffic (directed from your social ads).

By adding social sharing options to your blog posts, you’re essentially allowing your blog readers to do your work for you. As long as you’re pumping out quality content, people who read it and love it are going to want to share it with their friends.

Take your social sharing one step further and pre-write an existing tweet for your blog readers. Grab a good one-liner from your blog post or write a 1-2 sentence summary and include a button or link for your followers to immediately tweet it while reading your blog post.

One thing to remember here is that Internet users don’t have a lot of time. We want broken up, easy to read content, and we want the work to be mostly done for us when we share this content with our friends. Do the work for your readers and have a pre-made tweet ready and waiting for them to share.

There are online tools and services like Click to Tweet that will generate a ready to tweet link for you to share in your blog content.

Every social media post should include some type of image or video. This is why images auto-populate with links in your Facebook status box and why link summary Twitter cards exist. Because a tweet or Facebook post without an image is ugly and no one is going to click on it.

Don’t be lazy when posting to social media. Always ensure that your posts are visually appealing. Pay attention to the image you select for Twitter’s summary Card, and upload a new photo to your Facebook post if one doesn’t appear or if a blurry or unappealing image appears.

For the last time, your blog/website and your social media need to be cohesive and they need to work together. Make it easy for visitors to your blog and website to follow you by including buttons to your social media profiles.

You can find downloadable buttons online that will match your web design and brand colors, but most websites should come with the option to add these buttons. You want to make sure that your audience knows everywhere they can find you online.

In order to really generate qualified leads, you need to direct your web and social media traffic to your email list. Add a popup or slide in and a subscription bar at the top of your website to collect emails as well.

Social media lead generation ads are powerful for generating leads as well, and you should try to include content extras in your blog content that requires an email signup to download.

Using social media and your blog content together is the best way to see success in digital marketing. Social media will help you to exponentially grow your website traffic and, consequently, your email list. Use these strategies to integrate your social media marketing and your blog content.