How To Develop a Killer Social Media Strategy

If you want to be a successful blogger, then you need a social media strategy.  There’s no point in writing away and posting like fury, if no-one knows you’re there. With so many platforms it can so be overwhelming to learn how to use them at all. Let alone learning how to use them effectively.

In the first 18 months of starting my social accounts, I’d grown from 0 to over 15k, with almost 8.5k being followers on Twitter; so not a bad growth in that time. Let’s break this down into the different platforms and I’ll give you some tips and highlight what I do in each area.

Twitter

Twitter is a high volume/low value network; it’s fast-moving and you need to know how to get it to work for you, or it will pass you by.  Your strategy here should be quantity; aim for a least 5 tweets a day, but there’s no maximum number. The more the merrier!

I wrote how to grow your Twitter following, but I will highlight some key points and tell you what I do with this network.

  • You NEED Twitter lists. Without them Twitter may well be overwhelming and you will probably end up losing track of everything. You could have a list for your blog (those you interact with), closer friends, brands you work with and brands you want to work with.  The possibilities are endless!  My way might not suit you, but it works for me. I increased my following from 0 to almost 8.5k in 18 months and it has always been a great traffic referrer.
  • Schedule, schedule, schedule.  It is so important to schedule tweets that share your post links.  If you don’t, you can bet your bottom dollar someone else is and your one tweet will get lost in people’s timelines.  I know people worry about flooding other people’s timelines.  However, I believe that people follow so many accounts, that there is always a mixed flow of information on people’s timelines.   I use Social Oomph* to schedule which, in my opinion, is the best scheduler and it saves me hours of inputting for a very small fee.  Other options are Buffer, Twuffer, Hootsuite, CoSchedule, TweetDeck.
  • Times to Tweet – Best time: 1-3pm. Worst time: 8pm-8am
  • Finding people to follow – When I started to build my following, I would go into people profiles of blogs I loved, go down their following list and follow those who caught my eye.  At the start I would unfollow people who didn’t follow back, as you are limited to following 2k until your follower number builds up.
  • Retweeting others – I retweet where possible and always for people linking up to one of my linkies.  I retweet a lot of blogger linky posts and their general posts.  I use my lists to make it easy for me to retweet posts shared by members of my tribe.
  • Using Social Oomph – I schedule every new post of my own personal content to go out every 8 hours, twenty times.  Every review will go out every 8 hours, ten times, as do sponsored posts.  I have a few posts that do very well for me and seem timeless Blogging as Therapy, Blogging; A full time job? and my Blog Club page.  These posts tweet out every 8 hours forever (just put a 0 in the recurrences box on Social Oomph and you don’t have to think about it ever again).
  • Using Evergreen – This is a WordPress plugin, which I set to tweet an archived post on the hour throughout the day (and night for our friends in the US).  You can select certain categories/tags that you want to be included; I leave out giveaways and reviews, but let the others be included.
  • Respond – I *try* to respond to every tweet I am mentioned in.  Occasionally, (like on a Friday) my feed goes mad and I may miss one or two, but I will always thank someone for retweeting or sharing my post, thank each person who links to one of my linkies (and retweet their link) and respond to questions that I am asked.
  • Use #FF – to show your appreciation to other bloggers and businesses you work with.
  • Hashtag your posts – I have recently found a Google Chrome extension, Ritetag that helps you find the most popular hashtags and even gives stats for each one!  I am new to this so I cannot give my opinion, other than to say it looks like it will be a great help!  Hashtags help people to find your posts, so it would be silly not to use them if you want to increase your readership.
  • Following back – At the start of my growth I would always follow back.  However, to prevent my timeline becomingly too difficult to manage, I now only follow back accounts that are of interest to me.
  • Unfollowing – I am now very bad at unfollowing.  You can use a variety of sites to monitor your unfollowers.  I think this is more important when you are limited in your numbers of allowed followers.

Facebook

I think Facebook is a trickier platform, as they are so focused on making money that it is hard to get people to actually see your stuff without paying for it!  Facebook is a low volume/high value network; too many updates tends to annoy people and they are more visible as the network moves slower. Therefore, you need to make each post count.  Some experts have said a minimum of 3 updates per week and a maximum of 10; focusing on quality content (rather than quantity) that the readers will benefit from.  My good friend Hannah, from Mum’s Days, has written this awesome Facebook for bloggers post, that might help you.

  • Like and comment as your blog Facebook page –  To make your page more visible (just change it by clicking on the little flag).
  • Share any interesting work of others –  I shared a American blog post last week and it got over 116 shares! So don’t just share your own content. To find content, read blogs, look at your facebook feed and share interesting stories from businesses you support.
  • Times – the best times for Facebook are 6-8am and 2-5pm.  The worst being between 10pm- 4am.
  • Schedule – I schedule my blog posts to appear on my page at 8am and they are shared there just once.  If I get ahead writing posts, then I can schedule ahead of time on Facebook; if not I schedule the night before for the following day.
  • Use photos for 39% more interaction.  I often post from my IG to FB and Twitter.
  • Concise statuses are better – below 250 characters for 60% more engagement
  • Using emoticions  – increases comments by 33%
  • Thursday and Friday – are the best days for interaction – 18% more than other days.
  • Ask questions – posts including questions get 100% more interaction.
  • Advertise you page – to help bring in the likes.
  • Visibility – The more a post is liked, then the more people FB will show it too.  So if you have a tribe, get them to like your updates/comment and this should help you see a rise in the number of people seeing the post.

Source FB stats

Instagram

To me, Instagram feels different to the other social networks, almost friendlier.  Yes you do get spammers and lots of people trying to get you to buy slimming wraps, but on the whole it is a lovely place to interact and build relationships.

  • Be consistent
  • Use lots of relevant hashtags to improve your discoverability!
  • Comment on others and use # in your comments
  • 10 most popular # – Good morning/awesome/healthy/shoutout/follow/followforfollow/follow/throwback/throwbackthursday/love
  • Use Iconosquare to make IG on your desktop easier – great for responding to comments.
  • I use Square Instapic to make all pictures the right size for IG.
  • Use Tags4Likes to find appropriate hashtags for specific topics.
  • Post approximately 3/4 times a day and spread the posts out to increase your visibility.
  • I often like every post on my feed, it takes milliseconds to double tap and it gives everyone a boost.  They may also reciprocate.
  • Reciprocating likes – If I have time, I will go into the accounts of the people who have liked one of my pictures and like a few of theirs.

Google +

Similar to FB in that it is a low volume/high value network.  Every time you post on G+ you give google more keywords and information to index and link to you.  Google + is an area I still need to find time to focus on.

  •  3-10 updates per week.
  • Ask questions/ Start discussions
  • Share relevant content within your circles
  • I automate sharing to Google + from my WordPress dashboard and occasionally I will pop on and +1 a few things.  I also share friend’s posts on there, but I do need to formulate a more robust strategy.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a high volume/high value network.  You need to post frequently to get noticed in the volume of pins, but quality also matters.

  • Use beautiful images, catchy titles and carefully chosen keywords.
  • Make sure your pins link to your blog.
  • 5-10 pins a day.
  • Pin your posts  – only pin those with pinnable images and that are worth pinning. Good things to pin are tutorials and ‘Hot to’s’; posts that are giving the reader useful information.  Think will someone want to repin it?
  • Pin other interesting posts from your feed
  • Use a headshot, people want to pin from real people
  • See who have pinned your recent post, go and return the favour.  Try to engage.
  • Best times to pin – 2pm-4pm and 8pm-11pm. Worst: 5pm-7pm and 1am-7am
  • Post about your boards on your other social media networks
  • A pin is 23% more likely to be repinned if image is not someone’s face (Curalate research)
  • Pin seasonally – Go and make an Easter board!
  • Descriptions on pins – use positive words like fantastic/awesome, but also practical, descriptive words.
  • The average pin in repinned 10 times, compared to the average tweet which is retweeted only 1% of the time.
  • Popular board/seasonal boards on top row.
  • See whose pinning which posts from your blog – https://www.pinterest.com/source/yourdomain.com/

Linked In

This network is low volume/high value professional network.

  • Frequency – Post 2-5 times a week
  • Post your more formal/professional/technical content around your sector, i.e. for me it would be blogging posts.
  • Share your content in any relevant groups.
  • Time to share – Best times are 7am-8.30am and 5-6pm. The worst between 9am and 5pm.

A general tip would be to make sure your social media buttons are in a prominent place on your side bar.   I also put them at the bottom of every post, with sharing buttons.  Make it really easy for people to follow you and share your posts on a variety of networks.

I hope these tips have given you some inspiration for developing your social media networks. Which is your favourite social media platform?

If you want to be a successful blogger, then you need some sort of social media strategy. There is no point in writing away and posting like fury if no-one knows you are there. There are a so many platforms that it can simply be overwhelming to simply learn how to use them at all, without learning to use them fully and effectively. Now, I am not an expert in any of these platforms; all I can do is share the knowledge I do have and hope it helps you to develop a strategy that will work for your blog.

Comments 96

  1. I am once again impressed! I have no strategy whatsoever and I must follow some of your advice. You’re right; if you don’t promote your posts, nobody will spot them! Pinning now xx

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  2. Oh Aby, this is so helpful. Thank you. I really need to up my social media game especially on Facebook and Google+. Ahhhh, who am I kidding?! I need to up my game on all forms of social media. Thanks for the amazing tips. Hugs Mrs H xxxx

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  3. LOVE IT!
    How about ‘Nominate Me… Social Media’ at the end? 😀

    Aby – you are fantastic – that’s all I have to say!

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  4. LOVE this post – so useful and I hope to be able to start implementing some of these, especially the scheduling of twitter. I am always wary of clogging up peoples timeline but you are right, we follow so many, if you only post once in a while they can get lost in your feed.

    I think what you do and how you manage to fit it all in with Baby is amazing btw!! xx

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  5. Aby – Thank you for all the efforts you put into your blog and helping other bloggers. You are probably the most approachable person I have discovered the last month blogging. I have several woman that I admire as bloggers and they are very friendly but they have not “followed” me back or given that little extra support needed when starting out. Everyone has very limited time in their day but the small efforts make all the difference in people’s days. Thank you tons. Now off to “re-tweet” and try to follow some of this amazing information. Best wishes!

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  6. I think this is absolutely brilliant #obvs I have bookmarked it. I absolutely love social oomph and find it so easy, most of my traffic comes from Twitter too. Also totally agree about IG it’s a much friendlier place over there. As you know I’m getting to grips with FB but find it tricky to get engagement over there and as for Linkedin I haven’t a foggiest!

    My latest strategy is to work on Pinterest, Google+ and FB more xxx

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      Thank you my love. Hope it helps you. It is so hard to keep on top of all the platforms. I think I focus on three and the others get tossed some time when I have it xxx

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  9. WOAW! This is KILLER! All caps intended!! Okay will reread this when I have accesa to a oen and paper to take notes, because I just got schooled Aby! You always share auch valuable tips and advice x

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  10. This is such a great post. As a new blogger I have found the whole social media aspect quite overwhelming , it is so helpful to have it explained – thank you.

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  14. Such a great post Aby and such amazing tips! I think the thing with social media is it is so different for each brand I look after and what works for them. I love twitter and instagram best personally, Instagram is by far my favourite, but twitter gets me the most blog traffic! xx

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  15. This is so, so useful Aby.

    I am bookmarking this and going to re-read in until it all sinks it and then hopefully put all your good advice to use.

    Thanks for such fab tips, hun. xx

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  16. I love this post and am so glad you included all the platforms. I mainly use Twitter and Facebook but am just getting used to Instagramming more and haven’t even touched on Google+ yet.
    The one thing I should say though is that I’d read your Social Oomph and Evergreen sections again and look at your own tweets on Twitter. Having any post tweet every 5 hours indefinitely is spammy and the amount you post you don’t need to tweet about a post thirty, let alone twenty times – it will start to get on the nerves of your regular followers if it hasn’t already.
    Other than that though I agree completely. You’re great at what you do, have done so much in a short space of time and the momentum is fantastic. I love how passionate you are about everything bloggy x

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  17. Another such informative post – you are truly amazing and wonderful for sharing your knowledge with us all.
    I will definitely be re-visiting this post to keep reminding myself of your top tips – thank you Aby.
    ps: as a newbie, how do I get my comment to have the ‘Seize each day recently posted …. and a link to last post’ – ? I’d love my comments to have a link back to my last post – thank you xxx

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  18. Oh my, though I don’t know you personally, I feel like you are becoming my blogging guru!!! So many useful tips and tricks – and I am just in awe of how much you have achieved in a relatively short space of time!

    I love planning, researching and writing my posts, but am a bit rubbish at the social sharing, I think I just find it too much to handle, so end up avoiding it! But I know I need to tackle it if I want my blog to grow.

    These tips are great and make it all seem more manageable – I like the specificity of when and how much to post etc. Am always a bit stuck with the ‘when’ though, as am in the US, but many of my current followers are in UK, so end up posting just whenever! Any suggestions on that?

    Anyway, sorry for the essay, am off to start an Easter Pinterest board….

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      Ah thanks so much for your lovely comment, I am very flattered 🙂 I think if your audience is split I would just share the posts round the clock, not excessively but a good spread x

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  19. Fab tips, so great to see what you’ve found works for you.

    Google + is crucial for SEO and although I post there daily, I really need to use it more. As Google own You Tube, presence there feeds into views. I’m fascinated by SEO and growing my own brand so have subscribed to so many experts’ blogs. Could read about it all day. Some things vary for me, so twitter is am then after 8pm, a lot of brands I work with and am paid to tweet for ask me to post after 8pm, I find that a lot with twitter parties too as kids are usually asleep and parents are free. I have my best chats with twitter friends by night too.

    I would say don’t limit yourself pin wise, the more the better and join big collaborative boards for the biggest impact. Most have rules too so 10 per board. Totally in love with Pinterest, such a happy, relaxing place online.

    I use boosters a lot on FB, for my clients and a lot of my bigger posts, it really offers much greater exposure and very little goes a long way.

    Competitions are a great way of maximising social media too, particularly on twitter.

    Thanks for linking up to #brilliantblogposts

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      Thanks for your fab comment. Yes I pin more that 10 too, from research that seemed to be the golden number. I need to join collab boards etc. There is so much to do isn’t there and so little time. x

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  21. Such helpful tips – will be taking some of these on board. I need to use lists more on Twitter and find scheduling tweets and using Evergreen to auto tweet really useful. Thank you for sharing.

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  22. Thank you for so many helpful tips, especially good and bad times to post on each media. I don’t find posting a general post on Google+ brings much traffic but joining communities that are relevant to my bog and posting there has made a lot of difference.

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  24. That’s a very good list and I’ll explore some of the apps etc you mention. I am, however, going to make one suggestion. Always schedule a tweet at 2am. That way you reach the West Coast of the US, Asia and the breastfeeding mums / bottle feeding dads in Europe who are doing the nightfeed. O always get a noticeable spike in visitors when I do this. #thelist

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  25. OH my goodness, this post is amazing! You’re like the Professor of Social Media! Thanks so much, you’re so generous to write such an in-depth post on all you’ve worked hard to learn and work out for yourself. #thelist

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  26. I am so pinning this! There are so many things that I need to go over and make sure that I am using my social media the best way. Thanks for compiling all this info and for sharing!

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  27. Thank you for these tips. I have been struggling lately with Linked in, I had no idea I was supposed to be posting my blog posts on there. Fab post it has really helped. 🙂

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  28. Loads of great tips. I really must try out Social Oomph – it sounds like it could save me some time scheduling! Social media can be really time consuming but it is well worth it for the blog hits, so thank you for sharing! #TheList

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  29. Once again a brilliant and super useful post for all us bloggers. I really need to start getting my act together blog wise and get some sort of social media strategy in place so i will be saving this post for future reference. My facebook page is dire so i will be following all your advice to try and use that more and try to grow it. Google + just confuses me , maybe i will learn something about it at britmums, or is that just wishful thinking xx

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      Thanks huni, so glad it is helpful. Last year at BMs the G+ talk was rammed and we couldn’t even get in! xx

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  31. This post is amazing! Thank you so much as always. I have so much work to do! I’m fine with Twitter and Facebook but I really don’t feel I’ve got my head around pinterest and google+ at all!

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  32. Aby this is just a fantastic list thanks so much for sharing! I have learnt so much from your twitter posts already so looking forward to putting some of this into action. #thelist x

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  34. This is ACE!!! I am useless with all of this networking stuff. Twitter is my weakest as I just don’t get it! This will help me muchos.
    Hope your lush little lady has a fabulous birthday!xxx

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  35. WOW Aby I wish I had your knowledge and I need to sit down and actually apply all of this that you just said. I don’t know how to use twitter and facebook to it’s full potential and I am trying to grow my twitter following but I don’t want to follow 10,000 just to get 10,000 followers back as I was told that looks bad to brands and companies. But I don’t know how else to up my following either. So it’s a catch 22 for me. I am learning about scheduling tweets I am off to use evergreen that sounds great as I was picking archive ones and manualling tweeting it. Thank you so much for linking up to Share With Me. #sharewithme

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  36. A very useful most Abby, one that I will come back to, I’m sure. I use Twitter the most as that is where my traffic comes from but that may be a chicken and egg thing. I do think there’s a limit to scheduled tweets though. It gets on my nerves if someone is scheduling a tweet every 5 minutes and I will unfollow! I don’t post my blog posts on Linked In as I’m on there in a professional capacity and I feel that my blog doesn’t fit. I know others do though.

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  37. Some really useful tips and tricks here, although I think a lot depends on you as an individual. For instance, 3 or 4 instagram photos a day feels too much for me, as does sharing links to posts so regularly on Twitter – I’ve muted a few people before on Twitter who just share the same post over and over again. Still, the point of having a strategy is important and something I should do more work on myself!

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  39. Interesting post. I don’t really agree with you on twitter scheduled posts thou. Personally I find it highly irritating when people post the same content again & again too often. If they aren’t interesting they get unfollowed pretty soon because the same thing over & over in the stream is really dull.

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      I guess we all differ in our strategy. My following has grown from 0 to 8.5k in 18 months so I feel I must be doing something right. I get loads of likes, comments, and rts from all posts on my feed, people thanking me for sharing the post, so I am going to stick with my strategy. X

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  40. Fantastic tips Abby!
    I am trying to focus on 3 social media platforms. It’s something I read a while ago. I simply don’t have time to do it well on more than 3 platforms – I’m struggling with just FB, T and Pinterest!
    Instagram is in a way more for pleasure for me, as I like to take photos. I am not as consistent as I should be though.

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  44. INCREDIBLE tips Aby! These are going to be so useful for any blogger/ self employed person or brand.

    I absolutely adore social media (on the whole) – it has introduced me to so many incredible people and blogs and brought me wonderful opportunities.

    Twitter and Instagram are my favourite and like most of us, I’ve still got much to learn especially when it comes to Pinterest and Google+ so I am bookmarking your super advice and will keep plugging away at it!

    Thanks for sharing your wisdom. I have nothing to add. You’ve nailed this! 🙂 X

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  46. This is a bit of a goody! I like how you broken down and analysed each social networking platform in brilliant detail. I’ve shared it on email with a couple of friends of mine who will definitely be able to utilise it for their brand.

    Thanks for writing this – super useful! x

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  47. This is utterly brilliant. Concise and so easy to follow! I don’t schedule anything and tweet once or twice. My poor posts! Unloved and betrayed when I move onto the next one 🙂 thank you so much. I’ve been following you for ages but actually never properly interacted with you! I’ll be stalking you now ha ha (she says only half joking). Off to get some Oomph!

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  49. Found your blog through Steph @Misplaced Brit
    Fantastic tips, I’ve pinned & will work my way through them. I’ve been working in the dark, not knowing where to start up until now, thank you 🙂

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