Last year I wrote a post exploring how I use Social Media to promote my blogs – the post looked at the idea of creating Home bases and Outposts (a metaphor that I picked up from Chris Brogan).
In this video I extend the idea a little and talk about the importance of not only develping a presence on social media sites but also making connections with and developing a presence on other people’s home bases. You can see the full sized version of this video at How I Use Social Media to Promote My Blogs.
Here are the screen grabs from slides I’m sharing on this today at the MarketingNow conference in Melbourne.
![How to Get Dreams Out of Your Head [And a Video of Me Wearing Tights]](https://problogger.com/wp-content/themes/problogger-redesign/build/placeholder.png)
Thanks Darren,
It’s nice to see the whole plan visualized. It’s easy to get so caught up in one property (twitter, or fb) that you forget that the ultimate goal is to get traffic back to your own site(s).
-Jess
I must say, Social Media is amazing!
I started using Social Media to promote my blog and my content, and my traffic has grown by 300%!
The more you can put yourself out there and expose yourself to people, the more traffic you can get to your blog.
If you have 1,000 followers on Twitter, and you tweet to your blog, a certain amount of them will go over and see what’s going on.
And you can use it with youtube and facebook, and all of the other social media websites.
Great post, thanks!
Typo : DevelOping a presence
Ciao
Agree to you Darren that social media can help you generate more readers but I believe very few of them become your regular readers.
Also would like to say that using more than one media channels (just for sake of using it) will either end up giving less importance to one of the channels or literally burn you up.
As you talked about Flickr I believe we need to know which channel will be most effective looking at the type of Blog we are in. Finally its all about building a relationship
The balance between social media time and time spent working on the blog can be a tough one. Right now I only utilize three social media for my blog, and I wonder if that is enough.
Great stuff. Now I just have to find out where the other health freaks hang out. :o)
Darren-
When working with other “Home bases” you briefly mention that you developed a relationship with the site owner and that was very fruitful. Of all your effort represented in the content of the video and post, how much of it is dedicated to building these relationships with the home base site owners in your market or complimentary niche?
Thanks,
Travis
I agree that being just focus on the blog itself will be able to bring in more traffic. So using other means like social media to promote the blog is a great way to expose the blog to others.
Thank you for sharing Darren.
Social Media is good but as Chanda had said not a lot will become a regular reader, unless the content is what they are finding, as nowadays social media are more on communicating around with friends.
Personal gripe:
What is the current obsession with videos all about? its takes so much longer to listen to someone talking than it would to read what they’d said. (The worst are videos of presentation slides with someone talking over them. Just what is the point!)
I’ve made it such that everytime I post a new blog entry, my twitter and facebook accounts get updated automatically.
As a result, without any real effort on my part, I’ve visitors checking out my new blog posts almost instantly.
I have to agree with some of the above that social media traffic is, in general, not nearly as sticky as traffic coming from other sources. There’s something intrinsically trigger-happy (mouse-happy?) about the whole social media experience that turns people into spastic multitaskers who can’t focus on any one thing.
I dig deep into my analytics stats for several blogs, content sites, and static resource sites and in all three cases the hits coming from social media are the ones that spend the least time on the site after landing. The only thing worse is Google Images. Sure, a few will stick around, but it’s like the classic sales funnel: lots of prospecting effort to lead to a handful of actual readers. So trying to have a presence on all these social media platforms at once seems like pure masochism.
Creating a network is so important but a relationship network is key when your blogging especially when your starting out. Doing things like commenting on other blogs is great because it gets you traffic, backlinks and build relationships with the owners of the blogs.
Jeff Johnson talks about something similar to this about feeder sites so in the end these other sites are just bringing traffic and building your home base.
Social Media should be seen as a way to market / build your brand and build communication channels with driving traffic to your blog as a side-effect.
The key to making social media work for you is to find those channels which produce the results you are looking for, and then dedicate so much time each work day to those channels.
Wesley Craig Green
The Geek Entrepreneur
I have had much success with my Gif Blog on SU and Reddit…. will lesser success on Digg, twitter and facebook. But they all help to bring regular readers to your blog.
Love this post! I’ve just started a new blog of my own (having moved away from my old one for a while now) and am looking to gain some new readers!
I’ve found that social media works best when you focus on a narrow group of readers. Definitely worth the time it takes to increase your readership.
This was a pretty simple breakdown of promoting a website and on that many of my clients will find easy to understand, and thank your for that.
I believe it is possible to have the social media community become regular readers. It’s just as any reader coming from any other community; if you have consistent information on consistent topics and your writing offers a value to the reader they will return.
Visit other blogs and forums
I not only enjoy using Social Media to promote my blog but also to meet new and interesting bloggers. I like the idea of being able to help promote others as well via Social Media sites like Twitter and SU.
But, I definitely have to keep a good measure on the amount of time I spend on these sites and not neglect my own Home Base.
that is the way its, home base is the most important part of it, social media will only help if you have a strong homebase.
Excellent information! It appears that social media provides very important exposure to bloggers. I would think that making connections, or outposts, would be extremely beneficial.Thank you very much for sharing these useful tips.
I find social media a great way to get the word out but the problem I face is deciding if I should have a single twitter account (@digmo) for all my blogs or a separate one for each blog (@flixelpix) (@amuze). The problem is they are 3 different areas of interest :( Great post and sm definitely gets the word out and grows subscribers.
Very interesting ideas in this video, plus it is very easy to understand and to put in place. Thanks for the advice Darren.
Great post. Thanks.
David I’m having the same issue of do I or don’t I separate my identities. I worry that someone following me professionally may not care about something I’m interested in that is a hobby. But I’ve sort of given way to the @garyvee style of things. He mostly tweets about professional stuff but there’s definitely a large portion of personal tweets. And I heard him speak one time when he said that your personal interests can be a game-changer – in a good way – professionally too. So, for now, I’m using one acct for everything. Not sure how long that will last though. Good luck.
Great video break down Darren. The visualization really makes me realize how important visiting, and communicating with other similar sites is. Something I often lack!
I agree with you at 100% Darren!
And now with the social media applications that you can download on “iphones” and other smart phones, it gets easier for your blog to get noticed. All this can be done in the palm of your hands.
Bloggers should take advantage of these social media web sites to promote their blogs because TREMENDOUS amount of traffic can generated from them.
Without spreading the word out you wont get visitors any time soon.
Thank you Darren for that great video. I agree that it is vital today to develop you relationships as you are growing and developing your own blog and business. It is through these relationships that new ideas and companies are formed. Thank you for sharing this with us. I look forward to learning more from you :)
Terri Bork
Author
http://www.TerriBork.com
Hi Darren: I guess it’s about standing in front of the traffic you want to draw toward your blog (by visiting the blogs your target readers visit, engaging them in the social sites they’re already active in, and so on) instead of standing alone in your little island hoping people will get on the ferry and stop by.
No reddit in that map? You’re missing out!
Great post Darren! Been using some of the social sites you talked about but having your visial tool clears the focus more.
I’ve found social media traffic to be hesitant in participating at my site.
It was encouraging to hear your passing reference to “over the years,” as it relates to building your blog readership. You remind us it takes time to grow a blog.
Cool! Thanks.
Great post.
By building up your homebase first and then going out to outposts such as Twitter and Facebook, you build a solid foundation. I believe that without a foundation, everything else will fall to wayside. As you said, don’t spend too much on a outpost when it is something you can’t control.
I also love that you emphasize to get out and meet others. Socialize and building relationships is the name of the game.
With a strong foundation and strong relationships, you can’t go wrong.
Great visuals. I’ve had things like this in my head before, but i’ve never put it down to paper (or computer) for that matter.
pictures speaks thousand times more than words. Thx for the clear explanation..
Thank you Darren,I have used Twitterdiggstumbleupon and so on to promote my site. I think this is very useful.
Great post Darren! I definitely agree that Social Media is a huge part these days in blog/website promotion! Plus, it is fun to use, to make new online friends!
Henry
http://www.thehenry.net
Great post Darren..Its really a great post.Thanks a lot for sharing this post with us.Really a great post.
Thanks for sharing. Use of this strategy can bring some serious Google domination implications. For keywords with lower competition you could easily take over the front page of Google.
Thank you for this. I was trying to tell my sons why having one main site is so important. It’s so important to have ‘your own’ and then the sites that aren’t yours. You are simply awesome Teacher….thank you so much.
Great information as always. Social media networks have helped me get some traffic but I have a long way to go. My blog is very young and I still have a long way to go. Keep all the good information coming Darren!
Great video Darren – such an ease to watch/listen to.
The point you make of not putting all your effort into just maybe one or two outposts is a great one. I’m guilty of spending the majority of time on my twitter account than possibly my home base being my blog site.
Also developing your presence on the sites where people in your niche will be hanging out in was another great point.
Thanks again Darren!
Social Media has been a really big help on our blogs nowadays,thanks for a great information there
Good video! He has some good ideas about social bookmarking.. But you can’t get better ideas then roadtotheriches.org but thanks!
thanks for your article,i will try to application this technique,visualisation make me undestand about that.
Excellent information!… It appears that social media provides very important exposure to bloggers. Thank you very much for sharing these useful tips..
Social media networks has made a great impact not just in blog but in internet. And collaborating it in your blog could help you alot.
Darren, they dont say 1 picture is worth a thousand words as a matter of fact.
What you could have done explaining in 500+ words, you gave it to us in 3 simple images and pronto, it hit the bullseye. You definitely know how to put the content to good use.
Thanks again.
Very Good memory jogger here Darren, thank you.
I had been so busy doing my Networking,but not much in the way of a back up plan for my Biz Hub
Blessings
Tim Henderson
yourfunjob.com
Another important ways to promote a blog here Darren.. your technique looks very effective, hope I can implement it right away.
Thanks so much! What a great simple explanation. I’ve always found the balance between my blogs & Social Media too skewed (an unproductive). I’m now much clearer about which should come first. I think I might create my own slides to stick on my wall & remind myself of my homebase & outposts. Of course – big thanks for Mr Brogan too.