Using Your Spokes

Posted by Beth

July 26, 2010

Promo1 When I kicked off this month dedicated to Better Biz Blogging, I talked about the concept of your blog being your social media hub. In order to gain readership your hub needs spokes that help to promote its existence. The spokes I’m going to discuss today are the other social media tools that you can use to promote your blog in addition to your other activities on those sites.

Twitter is a great way to let people know about your newest blog post in addition to your other activity there. I will caution that in order to build a true community on Twitter, you need to do more than tweet blog posts. Get in there and converse with people and share information from others. You can automate the process of sending your latest blog post to Twitter using a tool like TwitterFeed, which will also send to Facebook. Another caution is that this turns some people off since it is viewed as an auto post, but it does make it easier if you are the type that forgets to Tweet your posts.

Facebook is another spoke that is popular for both community building and promoting your blog posts. Facebook makes this easy by giving you the ability to import your blog’s feed into your Page’s Notes. When it imports into your notes it also shows up on your page’s wall. It’s quick and easy and that is why it’s the chosen method for me.

In addition to promoting your blog through your spokes, you can give your readers the ability to easily promote you through their spokes. Make it easy for your readers to share your content. The first way is when you Tweet. Be sure to leave enough room so it can be Retweeted easily and without edits. There are also several plug-in options to add sharing to your blog. The one that I use is called Socialble and is easy to install and configure. Facebook also provides you many ways that your audience can easily share your content on Facebook. These tools are great, but be careful not to add too many that it causes your site to load too slowly. That will turn people away for sure.

What is your favorite way to share your blog content?

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