Social media is a great way to drive traffic to your blog, but it can be challenging to know the best ways to create engaging content for each network—and make it all look amazing. To help your blog stand out on each social media network (and help you increase traffic to your blog), here are 11 easy social media tips that you can implement now:
1. Post a Header Image to Increase Shares
The easiest way to make your blog more visually appealing and increase engagement with your blog posts and social media shares is to post an image before you start writing. See this example from Local Wanderer:
The header image for your blog should be captivating so it catches the eye of your reader. “Placing an image before or after your intro will start your post with less text, and less text (plus visuals) let’s readers quickly decide whether they want to continue reading,” according to Bloglovin’. The first image is also the image that shows up when your readers share the link to Facebook, so make it count!
More: 5 Ways to Make the Most of Bloglovin
2. Add Visual Links to Your Social Media Profiles
Having links to your social media profiles on your blog is a great way to increase your followers, but don’t stop there! In addition to the usual social media icons, adding an Instagram or Pinterest grid to your sidebar or footer shows your readers what they can expect from following you. A visual reference of your feed is more likely to catch their attention (and have them click through to follow you!).
“Stats show that blogs with a prominent widget on their site drive up to 10X more clicks, and gain followers up to 3X faster, than those without. More followers = more readers = more engagement = a more active community. Sounds pretty great, right?” -Bloglovin’
If your blogging platform doesn’t have a Pinterest or Instagram widget, you can easily create your own by screenshotting your feeds and making the image clickable, like the ones above from Bethany Menzel’s blog.
3. Use Vertical Images on Pinterest
Vertical images take up more screen real estate on Pinterest, and not only are they more visually appealing, but they also perform better!
Pinterest doesn’t limit the size of a vertical pin, and long, “stacked” pins with multiple photos are the secret to increasing repins and referral traffic from Pinterest, like these hair tutorial pins from lifestyle blog Treasures & Travels. They also add a vertical header image in their blog posts specifically to optimize the pins from their readers.
4. Add Text and Watermarks to Pinterest Images
In addition to pinning a bunch of photos from your blog to Pinterest, you should create one or two strategic pins to promote your blog post too.
The most shared pins have text on them, so simply taking a photo and adding your headline to the image can go a long way! Don’t have Photoshop? Don’t sweat it: free tools like Pablo on the web and the Over mobile app can help you easily create shareable, text-filled images. In addition to your headline, it’s also a smart idea to add a small watermark your Pinterest images to prevent people from stealing your image or using it without credit.
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More: 5 Tips for Optimizing Photos for Pinterest
4. Add a Pinterest Button to Your Blog
This might seem like a no-brainer, but add a Pin It button to your blog! It encourages readers to pin your images to their Pinterest boards, giving you a whole new audience when your readers’ followers see the pin. Because every pin includes a link back to your blog, Pinterest can become a huge source of referral traffic for blogs.
More: Adding Pin-It Buttons
6. Add Photos to Your Tweets
Twitter is an excellent way to increase traffic to your blog, and research shows that tweets with photos get 313% more engagement than tweets without photos. You can’t deny that!
Go the extra mile and tweet your blog posts out with multiple images – you can add up to 4 photos for one tweet.
More: #TweetTip: Use Photos to Drive Engagement
7. Link to Blog Posts on Instagram
Adding a link to your blog posts on Instagram is a little complicated, but it’s definitely worth it! You can’t click a link in a photo caption, but there are some creative ways around this.
The easiest way to increase referral traffic from Instagram is with the link in your Instagram bio. You can either change this to a direct link to each blog post, or have the link be a more general link to your blog. Then, when you post your Instagram photo, simply add a “link in bio” or “link in profile” call-to-action, so your followers know where they can find your latest blog post!
More: How to Create the Best Instagram Caption
8. Post Instagram Hashtags in the First Comment
Utilizing hashtags is the best way to increase your exposure on Instagram, but adding a ton of hashtags in your caption doesn’t look the best.
In fact, it can sometimes come across as too promotional and inauthentic. Instead, a new tactic that many Instagrammers are using is to add the hashtags in the first comment of their photo; the hashtags will be hidden after other people leave comments on your photo. Voila!
9. Create a Killer Instagram Bio
Your Instagram bio is prime real estate to promote your blog, so you want to make an Instagram bio that is relevant, engaging, and fun. Key things to consider including are your contact information, website or blog, social handles for other profiles, and a branded hashtag.
More: 5 Ways Brands Can Use Instagram Bios
10. Curate and Preview Your Instagram Feed
Posting beautifully edited photos isn’t enough to be successful on Instagram, you have to have a beautiful feed too! One of the hardest parts of making your Instagram feed look amazing is figuring out how to make all your individual photos look good beside each other.
Take a step back from posting one photo, and look at your Instagram feed as a whole: how do all of your photos fit together? The prettiest feeds have a good variety of subjects that are evenly spaced out, and the best way to curate an Instagram feed is to preview it in grid format beforehand. Latergramme’s Instagram Grid Preview on web can help you curate Instagram and achieve the perfect balance for your feed, just drag and drop them to different spots on your calendar to try out different looks for your feed.
More: 5 Steps to Curate a Gorgeous Instagram Feed
11. Be Consistent
The #1 tip for blogging is applicable to social media too: be consistent! You can use an AI blog writer to help you boost your blog’s output frequency. Just like you want to have a consistent content calendar for your blog, it’s important to consistently post to your social media accounts as well. Posting one stellar Instagram photo doesn’t do much for you if you wait two weeks before posting again. Give your followers a chance to get to know you, not forget you.
Scheduling your Instagram posts is an easy way to stay consistent on social media, and with Later, you can bulk upload all the photos from your blog post at once, and then easily schedule them as separate posts for the rest of the week.
