How to Promote Your Blog on Social Media: 8 Tips

Building your blog from the ground up takes dedication. You need to target a niche, learn how to create valuable content, and study SEO best practices to build a site that meets your goals. Having a blog full of interesting, engaging posts and effective SEO is an accomplishment. You should be proud of yourself.

Now it’s time to take the next step: promoting your blog. In many ways, this requires an entirely different skillset from the techniques you honed when you created your blog.

Learning how to promote your blog on social media requires an active investment of time; after all, social media never sits still, so you need to keep up with it. According to social media expert Neil Patel, the average social media post has a much shorter lifespan than even the most topical blog post.

Yet social media has also proven to be one of the best ways to promote all types of blogs and websites. Taking the time to learn how to promote your blog on social media can help you access a wider circle of readers and take your blog to the next level.

There are several best practices you can follow to make the most of your social media presence in promoting your blog. In this article, you’ll find:

• the benefits of using social media for blog promotion
• tips on how to use social media to promote your blog effectively
• examples of how other people have done so

Ready to learn more? Let’s get started.

The Top Benefits of Promoting Your Blog Content on Social Media

There’s a reason why social media has become one of the most popular marketing tools in the world: It works. Unlike other marketing formats like commercials and display ads, people actively seek out social media. That makes it a great way to find an audience that not only tolerates your promotions but actively engages with them.

That’s not all, though. Below are three other benefits of using social media for your blog.

Low-Cost Promotion

Cost is a significant factor to consider in marketing and promotions. Social media allows you to reach an audience of interested fans in a cost-effective way.

Of course, To reach a wider audience and organize your social media presence, you can pay for advertisements, promoted posts, or external tools to help organize your social media presence. But at its core, social media is a free tool that any blogger can use to get their site more traffic. If you’re going the paid ads route, social media is often cheaper than paid internet searches and other digital marketing channels. 

Increases Brand Awareness

Whether you’re using paid posts to build a social media following, or you’re hopping on trending topics and using other methods to create a following organically, a digital presence is a great way to increase brand awareness. 

Posting engaging content regularly often inspires your followers to share with their followers. Each new share exposes you to a new network of potential readers. 

Social media also lets you market in unique ways. You can partner with influencers in your niche and tap into their network of followers. You can also engage with your audience in real time with tools such as Instagram Reels and TikTok Live. 

If other users who are interested in your topics stumble on your lives, you can gain new followers and new shares. Reader engagement isn’t limited to live streaming. Simply taking the time to engage with followers in your comments and direct messages helps build your relationship with them. 

Sure, people can comment directly on your blog, but social media makes it easier for others to enter the conversation. Someone on LinkedIn might use your job as a starting point to discuss a topic they’re passionate about which would open up a larger dialogue. 

People in your Facebook comments might engage with each other discussing various points in your blog posts. 

Boosts Website Traffic

Promoting your content on social media helps you get more traffic to your blog (and other pages on your website). But a good social media marketing strategy isn’t limited to self-promotion. You should have a mix of self-promotion and other relevant content. Sharing interesting content with your audience helps you enhance your credibility as an expert while engaging your audience. 

When you're creating and promoting your content, make it shareable. Write about topics your audience wants to know about. Offer your own hot takes on trending topics in your industry and ask your followers to share their opinions. A two-way relationship with your audience is a great way to inspire your followers to share your content. 

When you do share your own material on social media, it’s more visible to other bloggers, business owners in your industry, or other people who might quote your content and link it to their website. Social media is a great way to build your collection of backlinks to move traffic to your website from multiple sources. 

Provides More Data To Analyze the Relevance of Content

Posting about your blogs on social media also helps you see how relevant your content is to your audience. If your followers regularly interact with your other social media posts but you notice that nobody's clicking on your blog links, it's an indication that you're not writing about topics relevant to them. Similarly, if you notice a surge in comments, shares, or likes on a recent article you've written, you can use this data to inform your future content strategy.  

Brings You Closer to Your Target Audience

Social media is just that: social. These platforms are built to allow people to share content with others. The platforms have algorithms in place to show people the content that’s most likely to interest them first.

Thanks to social media, you're able to personalize a process that doesn't always feel personal online. When you engage with customers directly, you can learn what they want, need, like, and dislike. If someone's considering your product but is hesitating for some reason, you can address that reason. If someone loves your product, you can personally thank them. If a buyer has a problem, you can solve it. 

By engaging with your audience on social platforms, you're building relationships with potential customers and learning how to provide the best product or service in the process.

Expert Tips To Promote Your Blog on Social Media Platforms

The simplest way to use social media to boost your blog is to share posts whenever they are published. While this is effective, there’s so much more you can do. These eight practices can help you share posts on social media—and convince other people to share them, as well.

1. Make Posts Easy to Share

Before you even create your blog’s social media accounts, there’s a straightforward trick to help boost your blog: Make it shareable. Most blogging platforms and site themes make it easy to include buttons that encourage people to share your posts on social media.

This post from The Financial Diet includes just three social media buttons for the sites on which it sees the most shares.

Don’t go overboard, though. It’s better to offer just a few buttons for the social media platforms you track or have a presence in, as in the example above. This keeps your blog looking clean and doesn’t distract the reader. Facebook and Twitter are excellent choices for blogs of all types, while Pinterest and Instagram are good options for image-heavy blogs.

2. Use Images Strategically

Speaking of images, using pictures can help boost the number of people who like and share your social media posts. The first picture you use in your post will often be picked up automatically by social media platforms when you or others share it. Using something eye-catching and exciting can help encourage people to engage with the link.

Including relevant images or graphics, often as a featured image on your content management system, makes your posts’ topics clearer to your potential audience. 

When you’re formatting your featured images, stick with defined safe zones for text on the relevant social platform. Generally, this means centering the most important text in the middle of your image. Depending on the platform, text placed on the outer edges of an image might be obscured by buttons, avatars, or other platform-generated elements.

3. Plan and Schedule Posts in Advance

Scheduling your content in advance might seem to go against the spontaneous nature of social media, but it has some surprising benefits. You plan your blog posts and you may even schedule them to release when you’re away from your computer. Why should social media be any different?

When you schedule your social media posts, you harness an effect known as social timing. People aren’t on Facebook all day, every day—although it may seem like they are.

Different social media platforms experience ebbs and flows, just like every other aspect of life. Every platform has its peak times and days—and you need to take advantage of this knowledge. Scheduling a tweet to go out when people are most active on Twitter helps you get as many eyes on the post as possible before newer content pushes it off people’s timelines.

While it’s impossible to predict with 100% accuracy when a social media post will receive the most traffic, these are the generally accepted peak times for the most common platforms:

• Facebook: During workdays
• Twitter: Daytime and evening for your preferred time zones
• Instagram: Morning and afternoon for your preferred time zones
• LinkedIn: During business days
• Pinterest: Evenings and weekends

None of these is accurate all of the time. You can try using tools like Facebook Analytics, Iconosquare, Tweriod, or other content calendar templates to analyze when your followers are most active—or you can investigate yourself by posting at different times of the day and checking the responses you get.

With some experimentation, you’ll find the days and times that work best to get engagement. You can schedule your posts to go out then.

4. Be Consistent To Build Your Social Following

Knowing when to post is excellent, but knowing how often to post is even better.

Some breathing room is vital for keeping your audience once you’ve built up a social media following. People like to have some variety on their page. Seeing too many of your posts can become irritating. Posting a dozen things on Facebook or Instagram one day and then ignoring the platforms for a week is not a good way to keep people engaged. Consistency keeps you top of mind. 

Here are some post frequency rules for social media posts:

• Facebook: Once or twice a day
• Twitter: Up to five times daily for maximum engagement
• Instagram: Anywhere from weekly to 10 times a day
• LinkedIn: Several times a week
• Pinterest: Three to 30 times a day
• TikTok: One to four times a day
• Threads: One to two Threads per week

Following the schedules above only works if you can keep it up in the long term. It’s better to post to Instagram once a week than to post five times daily for a while and then stop. A lack of consistency loses followers and lowers your engagement numbers.

5. Include Hashtags

When learning how to promote your blog on social media, you’ll find that hashtags are essential.

Hashtags allow people to find new content about topics that interest them—from people they don’t already follow. Including a few hashtags in your social media posts can put your blog in front of people who are actively searching for that type of content and attract new followers.

Check out EarthEasy’s Instagram post for a good example. It includes six hashtags that relate to the topic of the blog article and are placed at the bottom of the post so they don’t distract from the content.

Of course, not all hashtags are created equal. There are certain situations in which using a hashtag can get you into trouble — namely, misinterpreting a trending hashtag or using a banned tag. If you jump on a trending hashtag without knowing why it's trending, you could inadvertently align your brand with a negative (or even tragic) story. And if you use one of Instagram's banned hashtags that go against the company’s guidelines, the platform might "shadowban" you. If this happens, Instagram won't show your content on a user's feed (or Explore tab) unless they're an existing follower, and the platform won't notify you about the restrictions.

The best thing to do is target one or two hashtags on Twitter and three to five on Facebook or Instagram so your post doesn’t come across as spam.

6. Build a Blogger Network

Social media is made for working together. If there are other bloggers in your niche on the same platforms you use, consider working together.

When you share your blog posts on social media, other bloggers can boost them to their followers. You can do the same for them. Retweeting, sharing, or liking each other’s content helps you build a network within your niche and access a wider following. This is especially important on platforms that put popular content at the top of people’s feeds.

More engagement with a post makes it more likely to show up for other people, leading to exponential growth for popular blogs. It also helps you provide more value for your followers. By sharing a fellow blogger’s post on a day when you didn’t publish anything, you’re giving your audience more content.

7. Ensure You Have a Presence on All Relevant Social Networks

Every social media platform is a little different. It could be a mistake to stick to just one because there’s no single platform that’s the “best” to promote blog posts. Instead, choose two or three different platforms and use their differences to your advantage. Go where your target audience gathers and focus your efforts on those platforms. With so many social networks at your disposal, you want those that offer you the best return on investment of your time and resources. 

For example: On Instagram, you can create unique graphics that fit the square and minimalist aesthetic—and encourage comments. On Facebook, where article titles are more pronounced, you can use more abstract images and focus on bringing people over to your blog. Tweaking your style to fit the platform is much more useful than trying the same approach everywhere.

8. Participate in Online Communities

Posting to social media and ignoring the platforms otherwise could have you missing some of the most significant benefits they offer. Engaging directly with your followers through social media is a valuable way to build community and your brand.

Tracking when your accounts are tagged or mentioned on social media can help you become part of the conversation. Not only does connecting this way encourage your followers to keep sharing your content and talking about you, but it also can give you ideas for new blog posts to create and post in the future.

 How Compose.ly Can Help You Create Shareable Blog Content

Learning how to promote your blog on social media can be as straightforward or as complex as you want it to be. By creating informative and entertaining posts, scheduling them regularly, using hashtags, and engaging with your followers and fellow bloggers, you can amplify your blog’s reach. There are no strategies you can use to make poor-quality content go viral, so make a commitment to quality. 

If you’re looking for more resources, Compose.ly can help. For starters, check out our social media content calendar templates to keep track of what you plan to post and when. You can plan your social media content and schedule it in advance, and then relax while it takes care of itself. High-quality content is also more likely to get you noticed. Check out our blog writing services if you need help creating high-quality content more consistently. 

Now that you’ve got all the tools and strategies you need, it’s time to apply them and start promoting your blog.