If you want to build your business online, you already know how important it is to leverage the power of social media. When you look at businesses with huge followings, it's understandable to wonder how you'll ever close the gap.

The challenge is to come up with a viable strategy that brings you more fans and followers. One strategy that businesses often overlook is using their blog to build their social media presence. If you don't yet have a blog, starting one is the first step. Then put these blogging tips to help you close the social media gap into practice.

Why Blogging is the Place to Start

When you think about how to grow your social media presence, you probably think of increasing likes on your Facebook page or getting more Twitter followers. A better place to start, however, is with your blog. There are several reasons for this.

A blog helps you build authority in your niche. Blog posts with substantial and valuable content are one of the best ways to establish yourself as a knowledgeable expert in your field. Blogging is also an SEO-friendly activity. Each new blog post is an opportunity to rank for more keywords. If you do things like guest blogging and internal linking (linking one blog post to another post or page on your site), Google will like you even better.

Blog posts give you great content to link to on social media. This is one of the most crucial points for our purposes here. It's fine to share fun and interesting links, memes, videos, and other content. on social media. However, sharing your own valuable content is better for establishing and growing your brand. A blog is your own online property. Your social media pages belong to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or other platform owners.

How Blogging and Social Media Work Together

It may seem counterintuitive to make blogging your first tactic to close the social media gap. But when you think about the way people use social media, it really makes sense. If you study the latest social media trends, you probably know that it's helpful to post engaging images, videos, and other potentially viral items. However, what really drives the most successful social media campaigns is quality content.

It's fine to post clever tweets, Facebook posts and images on Instagram and Pinterest. However, if that's all you do, you'll be forever playing catch-up to the true leaders in your field. If you study these leaders and influencers, you'll find that they produce their own engaging content. When you start with an engaging blog, you'll have plenty of content to share socially. Here are a few tips to help you stay on point with this strategy.

• Update your blog frequently. Daily is ideal, but make sure you post something at least three times per week. Always link to your new posts on social media.
• Breaking long blog posts provides you with content for your social media pages.
• Blog on the latest topics. Stay current and publish the latest trends and news to keep your audience interested.
• Create content in multiple formats. Making your own videos is one of the best ways to get more traffic to your blog and social media sites. Other possibilities include infographics, podcasts, and webinars.
• Use paid campaigns to get more traffic. This helps your blog as well as social media pages. For example, you might create a blog post, publish a link to it on Facebook and then promote that post on Facebook. Experiment with paid traffic using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media advertising platforms.

If you want better results from your blog, website, and social media efforts, contact us.