Today's guest writer is a lovely woman that I have met a couple of times. I recall first meeting her last May at blog camp and I was in awe that such a new blogger had the guts to come along to a blogging event so soon in their journey.Hello, I'm Emma and I blog at Mummy..Mummy..MUM!! I have 3 small children and love to write, chat and make things mostly while drinking coffee and eating cake.
I started my blog about 10 months ago and have had such a great year because of it. I've been given the opportunity to do some amazing things and met even more amazing people. I have absolutely loved my blogging journey so far.
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I am by no means a social media expert, but am a bit of an addict, so here is my rough guide to social media.
If I’m honest I started my blog because I thought I could make some money from advertising. I wrote some posts, sat back and waited, nothing happened.
It was only then that I googled ’mummy blogs’ and found ‘Sticky Fingers’ and ‘The Gallery’ prompt. Thanks to ‘The Gallery’ my blog had its first visitors. I can still remember getting that first e-mail to say someone had commented on my blog and how exciting it was. From that point I didn’t look back. I became a regular contributor to The Gallery and Silent Sunday. Through these I found many wonderful blogs and soon had regular visitors to mine.Eventually I cottoned on to the fact that joining Twitter would be a good thing, and was soon spending most evenings engaged in twitter chats. Through twitter I have made many friends, some of whom I have met in real life. All have been amazingly supportive. Twitter can be a great place to just hang out. Like anything you have to put time in to get something out of it. It takes time to build relationships with people and build a following, but is absolutely worth it.
From a blog point of view Twitter is an invaluable tool for marketing your blog. It is such an easy platform to get your latest post out to potentially thousands of people, with little effort.
To find people to follow, I would pick a blogger you like and follow the people they follow to start with. After a while your audience just grows by itself.
Twitter can be a little overwhelming at first, but you just need to dive in and start chatting.
Top Twitter Tips
- Find like-minded people to follow.
- Use tweekdeck or hootsuite to manage lists or more than one twitter account.
- Be thick skinned – don’t worry if people don’t follow you back immediately, as long as you interact with people your followers will grow.
- Consider your twitter name, most people have a name linked to their blog, but that’s not always best especially when there are a lot of similar blog names around.
- If you read something you like, retweet it. Everyone likes to be be retweeted.
- Use Follow Friday, where people recommend people for others to follow using the #FF hashtag
- Put some time into it, like relationships in the real world, twitter relationships take time to grow.
Pinterest is quite new to me, but I LOVE it. It’s basically a visual bookmarking tool. You have boards for different areas of interest and then you can ‘pin’ posts to the boards using an image from the post. Pinterest is a great way to not only keep track of posts you love, but to get your own posts out there for others to find and hopefully re-pin for you.
Again you just have to dive in there, add some boards and start pinning and following. Don't forget to add the 'pin it' button to your blog then people can easy pin your posts.
Facebook
Most people have a separate Facebook page for their blog. I found it quite hard to build up a following on facebook, but again it’s worth persevering with as its another great way to interact with followers.
The best thing to do is follow blogs and brands you like and interact with them, whilst ensuring your own posts and status’s are interesting and engaging.
Basically you only get out of social media networks what you put into them, the more you interact and share other's posts, the more your own will be shared. It is hugely time consuming, especially these days when there are so many different networks. I have only briefly touched on the main ones I use. Don't forget there is also Stumble Upon and Google Plus which seem to be growing in popularity.
I never did manage to monetize my blog very well, but the experiences and friends I have made along the way have most definitely made the journey worthwhile.
Many thanks Emma, one of these days I will get my bum in gear and head over for a look at Pinterest, I see so many people talking about it but for now I do not have the mental capacity to deal with anything else so Twitter and a renewed interest in Facebook will have to do for meNext up on new bloggers fortnight will be Kerry from Multiple Mummy and she will be sharing with you the things she wished she had known about at the start of her blogging journey.
Thanks for reading, catch you soon. Mich x