If you utilize social media as a marketing tool, you understand the importance of integrating a blog into your social networking sites. You should do this for multiple reasons:
- It will increase traffic to your website from external sources, it organically boosts search engine rankings through targeted keywords and backlinks
- It will cut the time it takes to maintain your social media networks through aggregating content from your blog
- It allows you to post full length articles with no character limitation
Social media marketing is not really as much about keywords, backlinks or rankings as it is about content and presence. As consumers, we interact with businesses on social sites because there is value in our interaction. We value quality content that is interesting to us and that engages us, and to any social media marketer this is the desired outcome–consumer interaction.
How do guest bloggers engage your friends, fans, and followers and maximize your social media presence?
- Guest bloggers can reach a new audience as guest bloggers bring their own readers and fans. You can also reach new connections by tagging the guest blogger in most popular sites. On both Facebook and Twitter you use the “@” symbol followed by their name or profile. This will cause the post to be posted to their page or profile.
- Guest bloggers bring new ideas and different perspectives to your streams. We tend to write about what we are most familiar with first, and by having a guest blogger streamed to your social networks it changes the tone of your posts and can reach a different segment of your network.
- Guest bloggers can add credibility. Modern consumers trust peer recommendations more than we trust advertising. By affiliating your social media with “outside” writers, it immediately reduces the appearance of being advertising or SPAM.
- You can have your consumers post guest blog posts, what’s more engaging than that? We are always looking for people to respond to our blogs or posts, so why not utilize the ones who do? Chances are if they have responded to any of your digital communications they have shown that they are knowledgeable on the subject matter and have had at least enough interest in your business, blog or social site to take the time to read your communication and interact.
- Take a break. Consistency is crucial to social media marketing campaigns. The way to retain consumer interest is to have a daily, personal presence, and sometimes it’s difficult to always be on your game with good topics, or simply managing your writing while juggling a hundred other daily business activities. Why not delegate some of that responsibility for content?
Guest bloggers can be a great benefit for your social marketing strategies, and there are plenty of ways to find someone to guest write for your blog and/or social networks. For more information about how to pick a guest blogger try David Leonhardt’s blog The Golden Rules of Guest Blogging. Visit our SEO Web Design page to see how we integrate social media marketing into all of our websites.
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