This post is by Clare Lancaster, of WomenInBusiness.com.au.
As a blog business owner, your brand needs to reach beyond your blog.
Your presence on social media is a valuable one. In some ways, it’s the ultimate opt-in. When someone follows you on Twitter, subscribes to your YouTube channel or likes your Facebook page they’re making a choice to connect with you—and are receptive to your message.
These communication channels become assets for you to cultivate loyalty, relationships, and importantly, influence.
These assets are valuable not only for you, but for advertisers also. More and more, my advertising leads are inquiring about social media reach. They don’t just want a banner ad on my website—they want their brand exposed to my social networks.
There are creative ways to add more value for advertisers (in exchange for higher rates) without being spammy. You don’t want to sell your soul and lose the trust that you’ve built, but there’s no reason why you can’t monetize the attention of your audience beyond your blog.
Ways to use social media to offer more value to advertisers
- Publish a blog post to welcome a new sponsor and tweet about it.
- Publish a monthly “Editor’s picks” post including from your advertiser’s products/service range.
- Continue this by linking to a page within an advertiser’s products/service range from Facebook.
- Add a page to your Facebook account detailing monthly special offers that you’ve negotiated with your advertisers.
Make sure in all cases that the line between all advertising/editorial is clearly drawn and appropriately marked.
Add your social media statistics to your media kit and include any extras that advertisers will receive when they choose to book a campaign with you. You’ll get extra dollars for minimal extra work, and your advertisers will receive extra value.
Haven’t separated your personal social media accounts from your blog’s yet? Next week I’ll explore the pros and cons of doing just that.
Clare Lancaster offers blog reviews to help improve the business performance of your blog. She is passionate about helping people make their own path in work and life and can be found on Twitter most days (@clarelancaster).
Can’t wait for the follow up article. I just implemented a Facebook page for my blog today and it is already garnering attention. Thanks for the insight!!
This is a great article. Remember the key is that you need have influence over your audience. In order to gain that influence you need to gain their trust.
Nice Article! Thanks!
Great post, as usual Darren. Thanks!
Good one clare. Well said blogging and social media have become inseparable twins these days.
Great post Clare!
Nice Work Clare!,
I have built up 10,000 connections on “YouTube” and never thought this could be a possibility!…
Thanks
David Edwards
Thank you. I like to explore your suggestions.
Hi Clare,
Interesting stuff on blogging and social media combined, I like the part where you gave some tips on the ways to use social media to offer more value to advertisers.
This will help out a lot of people I’m sure, certainly will help me along when I go looking for other ways to explore and use these social medias.
Eamon Diamond.
Nice Posting !
I recently discovered the power of Social Media.
Thanks!
Thanks, interesting article !
I recently discovered the power of Social Media.
Thanks, interesting article !
I recently discovered the power of Social Media.
Hi Clare, some really good advice.
One aspect I would question is providing your social media stats. What do you mean by this?
One has to balance openness and transparency with a carefully thought out social media strategy that doesn’t too much details for the competition to exploit.
Regards
Tom
Well i’ll try to do what you said , the problem in my country is the use the people do about social media but i’ll give it a shot
Good insights Clare.
I think your point about transparency is the key here. Ensure your audience is clear on the content which are paid for advertisements – they will respect you for it ensuring your audiences loyalty and your longevity.
Other points may be:
-Relevance – is your advertising relevant to your market? – as an example business travel and convertible cars are not relevant to a parenting market. Yes, I’ve seen it :-)
-Accountability – Quantitative reach – are you providing accurate (perhaps audited) impression, visitor, engagement and geographic statistics? – and Qualitiative reach – what insights can you provide on your users ie demographics, purchase intent etc?
It’s all about providing value to both your audience and your advertisers….
Use Of Social Media SO Important In The Industry OF Blogging.
Awesome post, it generally works well if you have hordes of friends on the network or it’s a waste
A couple of years ago, it’s all about pageviews, RSS subscribers and PageRank. Now it’s all about the number of “Likes”, followers and connections.
I wonder what’s next?