blogging success

Blogging - Facebook - Google+ - Pinterest - Social Media - Twitter
April 26, 2013

The Daily Social Media Habits of Successful Bloggers

Want to know the secret for engaging with your followers online? In the world of social media, it’s all about your habits. The daily habits you implement as social media routines directly impact the ways you’re able to connect with your followers. When you are consistent, focused, and strategic in your efforts, the results show it.

Here’s what you should be doing, every day, on social media channels:

Google Plus: Post every new blog post.

When you post the link to your latest blog post on your Google Plus profile, that content gets indexed faster and you expose your content to your network. What’s more, content on Google Plus tends to do well in Google search results, helping you improve overall SEO. Here’s an example of how Brian Samuels, the blogger behind A Thought for Food, publishes his new posts on Google Plus, usually with commentary and #hashtags:

Pinterest: Pin every day—5 to 30 times.

As with every social media site, the idea with Pinterest is to be a resource of good content without being annoying. You shouldn’t pin nonstop anymore than you should pin infrequently; for the best results, pin every day. Pin content that’s relevant to your brand in some way—but feel free to think outside the box, too. The more quality content you pin, the more opportunities for others to repin your content and promote you profile, as well as to find your content through search. Look at the example of photographer Nicole Franzen, who regularly pins bright, beautiful images across her 31 different boards:

Editor’s note: If you don’t have time to sit on Pinterest all day every day, you can use Pingraphy to schedule your pins so they appear throughout the day instead of all at once.

Twitter: Tweet every day—at least 4-5 times.

According to research published at Media Bistro, profiles that Tweet at least four to five times a day see some of the best results on Twitter. Use your updates to interact with followers, retweet info you find interesting, share valuable information, and promote your content. Whole Foods Market does this well, posting relevant updates almost every hour:

Facebook: Share Images and Quotes.

An article at TechCrunch last year pointed out that Facebook updates typically receive responses for up to three hours after being posted—so spreading updates out by at least that amount of time makes sense. The content that does best on Facebook are images and quotes—users tend to stay on the network rather than clicking links that send them away. For an example of a blogger who’s doing this well, check out Deliciously Organic:

Overall: Think Strategically.

If looking at the above list feels overwhelming and you’re wondering how to find the time to do all these tasks each day, don’t be discouraged. To help you maximize your productivity, here are a few tips for being active on social media without spending every day tied to a computer screen:

Schedule Facebook posts and Twitter updates: Use a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite to plan your posts throughout a day. You can schedule updates to run at various intervals to spread them out for maximum impact.
Take a few minutes each morning to curate content: Rather than hanging on your social networks all afternoon, set aside a certain chunk of time each day to pull together shareable content. Because you’re scheduling posts, you can easily set these updates to go live all day long.
Monitor and adjust: Not every blogger needs to be on every social media platform, so test the different ones o see which makes the most sense for you. If you find engagement on Facebook brings in most of your traffic, make that site a priority; if regular and relevant Tweeting yields few results, focus your attention elsewhere.

Whether you blog about baseball or beauty products, using a chunk of weeks or a full month to test these social media habits is a good idea. Set aside a period in which you consistently post, share, pin, and tweet every day—and, at the end of that period, take a look at the results. They might surprise you.

What Farmers Can Teach You About Blogging

Author: elkecarvosso6

In this post, we’ll go over some blogging tips and blogging lessons you can learn from farmers. Where we grow up shapes who we are and how we blog.

I grew up in an extremely rural community. We’re talking more cows than people, 45 minutes to the nearest mall, and no access to cable (my parents actually had dial-up Internet until about six months ago). It was a farming community, with corn being the major crop of choice for most. Although I hated some aspects of growing up in this area as a teen, I look back and really respect the lessons I learned there now, especially from the hard-working farmers. These lessons have absolutely made me a better blogger.

Here’s what they taught me:

Work Hard for Every Dollar

Blogging as a career is tough. Physically, it’s a cake walk, but you have to have a really strong work ethic to make money this way. Part of the reason I think I’m successful today is that I learned from an early age not to be a slacker or procrastinate.

If you don’t do your work on a farm, you don’t make money. In fact, if you slack for more than a day, you put your plants and animals in jeopardy of dying. Things might not be so dire with your blog, but the same principle applies: if you don’t do your work every day, you stop making money and your traffic will eventually die. Blogging isn’t a “write it and forget it” job, despite what some people say about making money in your sleep. This is the exception, not the rule. You have to have a crazy work ethic as a blogger in order to make it a successful career.

Don’t be Something You’re Not

While you won’t find any Applebees or even Dominos in the community where I grew up, there are some mom-and-pop diners where you can grab a meal. Farmers will stop in for a cup of coffee or a bite to eat, often after they’ve already put in a few hours of work in the fields or barn.

Shoes and shirts are required, but that’s about as far as the dress code stretches. It’s nothing to walk in and see farmers unashamedly covered in dirt from their morning tasks. They aren’t trying to be something they’re not.

It’s an important lesson for bloggers. Every day, I see people trying to “fake it ‘till they make it” or represent themselves in a certain light, but at the end of the day, your readers will respect you more if you just show up in your work boots. Plus, it’s a lot easier and less time-consuming to be authentic instead of trying to portray yourself a certain way.

Save Your Pennies

Farming is hard work for little money, and a lot is up to chance every year. If you don’t get enough rain, your crops could die and you won’t make much money that season. A single bout of illness can kill off your livestock, and again, your bottom line will suffer. Every farm family I know has gotten extremely good at saving money.

As a blogger, this is also a good move, since your paycheck is uncertain and somewhat out of your control. With every Google update, for example, there are people who panic because they lose all of their traffic and their earnings plummet. Or if your site goes down for some reason, you might not make as much money this month as you usually do.

Pad your bank account to prepare for the dry spells. Even if you make a seven-figure income this year, next year you might make a fraction of that amount. You don’t get a regular paycheck as a blogger, so prepare for the dry spells.

Where We Grow Up Shapes Us

I think whether you grow up in the city or the country (or somewhere in between), you learn certain lessons that stick with you for the rest of your life. I feel very fortunate to have an upbringing that taught me the above lessons (and others of course). What lessons did you learn growing up that have stuck with you and have helped you in your blogging career today?

How Big Businesses Are Achieving Blogging Success

Author: erlindawardill

Yesterday our very own Rick Calvert moderated a session at the Blogging Success Summit 11 (it’s not too late to sign up!) that covered How Big Businesses Are Achieving Blogging Success. The panel featured Sukhjit Ghag (from Sony), Deanna Govoni (from Cisco), and Scott Monty (from Ford). Here are some take-aways from the presentation …

Sony:
Sony uses their blog to engage with enthusiasts and customers. They use several multimedia elements including photos, video blogging. Sukhjit says that it’s really important to have a visual side to a blog update – and even on Facebook. She also revealed it’s important to put yourself out there – as long as you have solidified and support your message.

Sony also put together some case studies, and saw some amazing results by showcasing exclusive content for their readers and sneak peeks to new products. A key aspect to their blog strategy is responding to their comments. “It’s not about being the expert in everything, its about knowing what experts use to connect with the community.”

Cisco:
Cisco uses their blog as the social media hub – which reaches out to their Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Flickr accounts. But their goal with those external products is to always push back to the Cisco home and brand. The main blog is also a hub for their 28 separate blogs with teams focused on different products! Their goal is to showcase thought leadership, engage a community and gather valuable feedback from customers, partners and stakeholders.

Cisco believes that “participation is the currency of the new economy” by engaging with the audience, listening to the conversation, and changing business practices if necessary.

Ford:
Ford evolved their blogging platform into The Ford Story. It didn’t really start out as a blog – but was launched in 2008 as a political action site to provide readers with a humanized way of telling their story and provide documentation of the execution of the Ford plan. They saw great results but realized they needed to turn it into a blog for further updates and to interact with their readers to make their content “embeddable, spreadable, and shareable.”

The blog is designed around the community of Ford fans – showcase their comments via blog posts and Facebook – and allowing them to share their stories via text, images, and videos.

Want to hear more of these business strategies? sign up and check out the archives!