How to Use Blogging and Social Media Together for Greater Blog Success

Are you using blogging and social media together for greater blog success?

Social media is an extremely valuable tool for bloggers. I’ve written about blogging without social media. Still, in all honesty, it is one of the best ways to drive traffic and monetize your content.

In this article, I’ll explain everything you need to know about integrating blogging and social media to increase your blog’s success rate.

The Synergy of Blogging and Social Media: A Recipe for Success

Blogging and social media complement each other very much. You can use your blog to get more social media followers. You can use social media to get more blog readers.

However, the two are very different. Blogging is yours and your owned data, while social media is rented, and you can lose it at any time. You should use them together, though, if you want to grow your blog quicker and enhance your chances of profiting.

Blogging and social media can be used together to help you grow your target blog audience, increase engagement on both channels and definitely increase traffic to your blog and social media profiles.

There really are no disadvantages to using your blog and social media together.

Creating a Content Strategy That Aligns

It’s important to create content that will benefit both your blogging and social media channels. You can write long-form content for your blog and short-form content for your social media channels. When you include both channels in your content strategy, it gets easier to accomplish success in both areas.

It’s so important to use a common brand and consistency with both blogging and social media, though. Make sure if people see your blog or your social media, the themes and voices match, and they’ll immediately know it’s you. You should also consistently post on each. Use scheduling features on your blog and social media to stay consistent and ahead of the game.

Promoting Blog Content on Social Media

Suppose you’re using WordPress as your blogging platform. In that case, there are many great plugins available for sharing your content from your blog to social media. Jetpack is one of them. You can write and schedule your blog posts, and as soon as they go live, they’ll automatically be shared on the social media platforms that you have chosen. You can even customize the text and visualizations that will be shared with them.

You should create awesome social media content based on your blog content and regularly share it on your channels. You can schedule the content to be shared ahead of time using something like Buffer so that you can focus more efforts on engagement, which is exceptionally important these days.

Take your long-form blog content and create a short-form and simplified version of it for social media content. For example, you could turn a top 10 article into a simplified top 10 thread on X. In the last post of the thread, you could link to the main full article to give the reader more information. Other content-shortening tactics could include creating infographics or visual summaries of your blog posts or breaking down a long article into a series of shorter posts. Do content-shortening tactics like this to help use blogging and social media together.

Social media platforms like X, Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn use algorithms that give more views to content that keeps people on the platform. It’s better to use social media to grow a following around your brand than to just post links to your latest blog posts. While posting those links is a good idea, make sure you’re also posting native content to help grow your reputation on the platform.

Using Social Media to Drive Blog Traffic

Using social media to increase your blog traffic is simple. First, focus on building up a community of followers and loyal ambassadors by posting native content (text-based, images, and videos) and engaging as often as possible. By ‘native content, ‘I mean content that is specifically created for the platform it’s being posted on rather than just sharing links to your blog posts. This could be text-based posts, images, or videos that are designed to be engaging and shareable on the platform. Do live events, add stories every day, and be active. Schedule content so you don’t get overwhelmed by scaling your activity. Post links to your content, but make sure you’re posting more native content to keep people flowing in.

Consider all the features provided by the social media platform. If they’re trying to get the short-form video to work, jump into it and use it at scale. Most social media platforms award users who use their new features with more views. Use hashtags, trending content templates, and all the features people are using to become social media famous.

Take advantage of social media communities, too. By ‘social media communities, ‘I mean groups or pages on platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn that are focused on a specific topic or interest. I created a hiking Facebook group, and now it has over 46,000 members. I post my blog links there and usually get thousands of readers a day. Get social with your followers and develop relationships with them. By engaging with these communities and sharing your content, you can reach a wider audience and drive more traffic to your blog.

Engaging Your Audience on Social Media

The best way to convert a social media follower to a blog reader is to form a relationship with them. You can do that easily through engagement. Pay attention to who is following you and commenting often on your content. Engage and befriend them. Get to know them. Build that important relationship with them.

Encourage your social media followers to read your blog posts and discuss your content on social media. Encourage your blog readers to visit your social media pages to read the content. In all honesty, getting comments on social media typically beats traditional blog comments because of the increase and virality of what social media provides in terms of readers.

To better reach your audience, ask questions, post polls, and interact with them through live events and stories. Remind them to check out your latest blog content, share it with others, and tell you what they think about it.

Repurposing Blog Content for Social Media

Repurpose your blog content for social media. As mentioned above, you can minify your lists into threads for X or checklist posts for any platform. You can create visuals with the blog content on them or even just post quotes. Since you’ve already created the content for your blog, you might as well reuse it elsewhere.

You can create an infographic for your niche and use it for both blogging and social media. You can also create visual quotes and use them in carousels on platforms like Instagram. If you can turn your blog into a video, you can upload it to YouTube and even make short-form content for Shorts and Instagram Reels.

Repurposing your blog content will extend its life online. It also helps give you ideas for new social media content when you run out of ideas. Since the content is already created and there for you to enjoy, you might as well use it and keep it alive.

Using Social Media to Generate Blog Post Ideas

Blogging and social media also go together because of the intelligence-gathering side of things. You can use social media to get new ideas for your blog content. The great thing about it is that those ideas are usually trending because they’re being talked about on social media. You should always write about the topics that are currently trending in your niche.

You can also use social media to engage with your audience. This gives you a direct line and communication with your readers. You can ask them what kind of blog content they want to see from you in the future. This will help you generate ideas to write about that will actually get read by the masses.

You can also use social media features such as polls and comments to identify and understand your audience’s preferences and needs. It is important to create content on your blog and on social media that meets your readers’ needs, wants, and pain points. This can easily be accomplished through social media audience listening.

Building Your Personal Brand Across Platforms

Be sure to recognize the importance of branding. You need to consistently create blog content, and your audience needs to know when to expect it. I publish every Wednesday at 10:00 AM CST. I’m consistent about that. You should do something similar so that people know what to expect and when to expect it.

Make sure you align your blogging and social media brands. This means you should use the same photos and avatars, the same color scheme, and the same voice on both your blogging and social media channels. Don’t be a different person on each channel.

Branding is essential for many reasons. The biggest reason is recognition. You can also become a household name through branding. Look at other companies that have built a brand: Nike, Puma, Adidas, Trek Bicycles, Gerber Knives, and Yeti Mugs. Branding is what gets you a huge following and is known anywhere you go.

Analyzing and Measuring Success

Make sure you’re paying close attention to the analytics of your blogging and social media channels. For blogging, you can use tools like Jetpack or Monster Insights to get analytics that you would want to watch. You could also use Google Analytics straight-up if you’d rather do that. Learn what each metric means and how it applies to your blog.

You should also monitor your social media analytics. Each time your metrics change, strive to improve your social media presence. Metrics can help you determine what you should and shouldn’t be doing.

The most important metrics will always come from human intelligence, though. Make sure you are truly listening to your audience’s needs, wants, and pain points. Use their feedback to make changes that will better your blogging and social media channels.

Final Thoughts About Blogging and Social Media

So, now you know the importance of blogging and social media channels being used together. Social media is used by billions of people every day. Why not take advantage of it and use it to get more readers and traffic to your blog? Only, you have to play the system because it’s not as easy as just advertising your blog posts anymore. Follow the advice above if you really want to win with social media for blogging.

Comment below with your tips on how you have used blogging and social media to help you out.

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About the Author

Shawn Gossman has created content, blogged, ran online communities, and shared a passion for digital marketing for over twenty years. Shawn believes the best way to help content creators, businesses, brands, and marketers is to give away more than you sell. The same advice is recommended for the readers who follow this blog. Shawn also offers various services for extra help in content creation and blogging.