In this burgeoning age of digital sharing – creating and publishing content through websites, blogs and social media services – it can be overwhelming keeping track of every service, account and platform for publishing content. Even worse, great content such as a powerful or informative blog post can fail to find an audience if it is not promoted properly through other platforms and channels, such as Facebook and Twitter. What is the best way to create, publish and promote engaging content to your followers, customers and the general public using your online accounts and properties?
Finding An Audience Is Key
Not only can managing and utilizing a blog and social media accounts be difficult, it can sometimes feel impossible to find an audience online. Many of us have created what we believed to be an excellent piece of content, whether it be an engaging blog post, a clever social media update or even just a funny image on Twitter, only to be disappointed and frustrated when we received little to no “Likes”, comments, or re-shares. It’s not enough to simply have a great idea or engaging content to share with the world – it’s equally important to choose the right platform for your content and maximize its exposure on social media.
Choose The Right Format For Your Idea
The first key to successfully creating and marketing your content is choosing the right format and platform. Almost any modern blogging platform and social media service can share content from another – you can create an original blog post and share it with your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn followers, or you can create a Facebook wall post and share it on your blog, Twitter and LinkedIn followers. You can even create a simple tweet and share it through your website. Therefore, what is the right platform to host your content, and how should you promote your content through other platforms?
Choosing Your Platform
To begin, it is important to choose the right platform. A WordPress blog post has no character limit, while a tweet is limited to 140 characters. A long, detailed blog post cannot be sufficiently condensed into a tweet, while a simple observation should not be padded and stretched into a long blog post. Therefore, ask yourself exactly what you want to convey to your readers and choose the proper platform for effectively conveying that idea. While a blog post and a tweet are on opposite ends of the spectrum, a Facebook post falls somewhere in the middle – you can create a Facebook post with up to 63,206 characters, but it is highly unlikely that any of your Facebook followers will want to read a 63,000 character post. Instead, a Facebook and LinkedIn post is perfect for an announcement, idea or a brief tutorial of one to three paragraphs. With the 140 character limit of Twitter, it is impossible to convey anything more than a brief observation or message, but you can attach a link and an image.
Adapting Your Content To Each Platform
If you have written a blog post and you wish to share that blog post through social media, it is vitally important that you have a well-written and engaging title, summary and, if possible, a featured image. Both the title and image of your post will often be automatically carried over to your social media posts when the link to your blog post is added to an update. All of our Blue Zenith blog posts include a title, a summary and a custom image.
Share Your Content
Next, it is important to make sure that when your content is shared through other social media sites that it is presented properly to your followers. Unfortunately, many content creators rely on platforms to automatically share content with each other. This can sometimes result in titles and featured images not appearing and even content being awkwardly cut in mid-sentence, especially when shared through Twitter. Your followers may not even understand what your post is about, which can lead to your link being disregarded.
Properly Leveraging Each Platform
When sharing or promoting content over social media, it is important to leverage the built-in features that are unique to each platform. For instance, Facebook and Twitter both use a hashtag system for tagging posts – by including hashtags with your posts, you can reach a larger audience. Both systems also allow you to tag other users, which is a great way to alert others when you are citing their work or complimenting them over social media and can lead to even more sharing. Finally, some platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to edit the title and summary of your posts before you publish them, which can allow you to tailor each field to suit a unique audience.