Jump On The Bandwagon!
There are so many ways to use social media to promote whatever it is that you are doing, that it is beyond the scope of a single article to explain them all. In reality, it would take the likes of an entire book to properly explain the relationship between social media and blogging. However, I will go through the general idea of promoting your blog through social media, and hopefully give you some ideas in the process.
First and foremost, it is important to note that if your material is boring, cliched, or just not interesting, then no amount of social media integration is going to fix that. You must be aware that promotion does NOT equal web traffic. Your content must already be good, and fun to read or else the only thing you’re going to get through promotion is the fact that more people are aware that your writing sucks. So, if you need to work on your content, then do that first!
Otherwise, if your content is ready to be exposed to more and more readers, and you just aren’t getting the exposure that you want through leaving blog comments alone, then social media is the next logical step towards finding your potential audience.
Let’s face it, a LOT of people are on Facebook. There’s something about it that attracts people of all ages. I have family members on there that I never would have expected to see on there, that wouldn’t have gone anywhere near Myspace. Facebook serves several purposes. First of all, people go on there to connect with friends and family. Secondly, people go on there to pursure their interests and their hobbies.
You can definitely capitalize on the latter reason. First of all, you might want to make sure that your blog has a Facebook presence. Create a group for your blog, so that people who stumble upon it within Facebook will be directed back to your blog, and promote it on your blog so that your current readers can visit your Facebook group. Stay active within the group and give people a reason to return to it on a regular basis.
Next, run a search for people’s interests, so that you can meet new people who might be interested in what you are writing about. Join similar groups so that you can network with like-minded people.
Lastly, be sure to post links to your newest articles as soon as they go live, that way all of your friends will know when your articles are posted. However, make sure that you don’t overdo this, because if you do, you will possibly annoy lots of people, which will cause them to block your updates.
YouTube
Millions of videos are watched on YouTube at a steady rate, and as one of the internet’s hottest forms of social media, every serious blogger should at least be aware of the phenomenon that is Youtube. One thing that Youtube has over every other form of social media in this article is that it has the power to reach more casual visitors. All of the other social media sites mentioned here require the people that you reach to be subscribers of the various sites, but Youtube has the ability to reach more people just casually browsing!
If you have a webcame, or a video camera of any kind, then great! Jump into the mix and start broadcasting videos of yourself. You may not be aware of this, but there’s already a massive video blog community on YouTube, so if you are already blogging, then you can jump right in and do the exact same thing in video form. At the very least, you can do like many other people do and record audio of yourself and set it to visual images with a video editor. This can be incredibly inexpensive to do, so if there’s a will, there’s a way.
The reason that you should do this is because YouTube has a feature that allows you to respond to other videos, and will link them together, so if people listen to the discussions and like the points that you make, then they can choose to subscribe to your video feed so that they will be notified when you post new videos. Of course, you have the ability to direct viewers back to your blog in the process, and the possibilites of integrating your videos into your blog articles are easy, so that your normal readers don’t miss out on anything.
MySpace
The glory days of Myspace are in the past, and are probably not coming back, despite their attempts to revinvent themselves. Most likely, Myspace will go down in history as a trend of the first decade of the 21st century. However, just because Myspace is on it’s way out, doesn’t mean that it’s obselte quite yet. Many people still use Myspace, and some people haven’t quite made the jump to Facebook yet. Personally, I know many people who I can ONLY get ahold of on Myspace and not Facebook, so that tells me a lot right there.
You can use Myspace to market your blog in most of the same ways that you can use Facebook. Find people who are interested in what you are writing about by searching the friend lists of similar groups and people. Post bulletins advertising your new blog posts. Write exclusive entries on your Myspace blog so that people have a reason to subscribe to it.
One thing to remember though, is to not overload your Myspace page with a lot of graphics and widgets. Just because Myspace gives you a lot of freedom to customize your page doesn’t mean that you should use it! Keep the page simple, looking professional, and clutter free so that it loads quick and people can read your writing and find their way to your blog quickly and efficiently!
Here is an example of social media that has seen unprecedented growth in the last year! As a matter of fact, I believe that Twitter is still in a process of evolution, and will continue to grow and change in the coming years.
First of all, make sure that you are tweeting all of your articles. One good way to do this is with the Twittley plugin, which will not only tweet your article for you automatically, but will also promote your ariticle on the Twittley website and make it SUPER easy for other people to retweet your article. If you aren’t using Twittley or a similar plugin, then at least make sure you send a tweet that includes the name of your article and a link to it.
Secondly, Twitter can be used to generate interest in your articles. All it takes is a quick update on what you are writing about, and if your followers find it to be interesting, they will be more likely to check your blog in anticipation for the future article!
Lastly, Twitter can be used to get quick feedback on what you are writing about. You can do things such as ask your followers a question and write about the responses that you get. This can help to generate some ideas for you if you know what you want to write about, but you don’t quite know what to say.
Overall, I think that the key to pulling off social media integration with your blog is to give your readers a reason to check out your presence on each social media outlet that you choose, while simultaneously using them to attract new readers. After all, what’s the point of branching out into social media if you’re not trying new things? You can very easily host videos, and provide quick updates on your blog. It’s the power of social media to reach NEW people that makes it worth trying.
I’m currently in the process of harnessing this power for myself. Right now, I’m honing my Twitter and Myspace presences, with Facebook and YouTube being in the near future. You can rest assured that I will be “practicing what I preach” and using all of the above strategies myself. I believe that every serious blogger should do the same and try to have a real social media presence. And as a parting thought, if you haven’t done so, this would be a good time to follow me on your social media network of choice. 
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