[LET’S CHAT] What’s the Most Effective Social Media For Your Blog?

So, there’s a constant message around the blogosphere that social media is a big must for your blog and promotion. I think that’s definitely a true statement.

Though you can definitely go without social media and still do well (trust me, I reached 100 blog followers in a short amount of time and wasn’t using Twitter or Instagram at the time), I have found that it’s a really awesome place to promote my posts.

Social media can definitely be time-consuming.

I mean, even waking up in the mornings, I usually check my e-mails and Bloglovin’ first, then Twitter, then the WordPress app, then Instagram, and then I end with Books Amino. Obviously, that takes a while, but I will say, it’s really fun to look through all my feeds or wake up to new comments, likes, and followers.

There are definitely people out there who are total social media wizards, who can fire off clever tweets five times a day, post three gorgeous pictures, organize an entire Pinterest board, interact on Faceboook, and then manage to answer all their blog comment. I am not one of those people. I’d say that my handling of social media is average, and I do prefer some social medias over others (Instagram over Twitter any day), but I try, and it’s really the thought that counts.

Twitter 

So, I consider this one to be the best way promote your posts! A large majority of book bloggers are on Twitter, and it’s probably the easiest since you can actually hook up your Twitter account to WordPress to promote your posts (which was  godsend when I figured out I could do this).

Personally, this isn’t even my favorite social media. I literally spend probably three minutes scrolling through my timeline, then I leave, which I’m sure is odd to some people who say they’re addicted to Twitter. I’m just not. But I’d recommend this one the most just because it’s not as hard as keeping up with other social medias, because most of them require work while you can fire off a Tweet in like, five seconds.

Instagram

Though I love Instagram with all my heart, it’s probably the worst way to promote your blog posts. To me, it feels like a total different entity, especially since bookstagrammers are now seriously considered as people to send ARCs to, even if they don’t have blogs, while Book Twitter is sort of for the “average Joe” if that makes sense.

Instagram doesn’t allow links in captions, only in the “Website” space for your bio, so that makes it harder for people to actually find your site since most people aren’t going to take the time to go from their newsfeed to your bio. Not to mention that even though I had people who had blogs who followed me on Instagram, they didn’t follow my actual blog, and vice versa; there are people whose Instagram accounts I followed, but not their blogs. So it’s all very disconnected. It’s a lot of work, and that’s probably why I quit last month, so there’s that.

But if you really want to put effort into it since it takes a lot of work and if you love pretty pictures of books like I do, feel free to use Instagram! But I just feel like it sucks promo wise, no matter how much I try. I do love looking at pretty pictures, though. I feel like just getting an account again just to follow my faves and like their pictures. I MISS YOU, INSTAGRAM.

Facebook

Honestly, I don’t know if it’s a good way to promote your posts or not. Personally, I don’t have an account at all, and never had. But, funnily enough, I get a pretty good amount of views from the site, and I’m guessing it’s because someone is cross-posting my stuff on there? Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t tell you when someone cross-posts your stuff somewhere else, so I have no idea who is doing it or what posts they’re advertising, but thank you Mysterious Facebook Poster. Your work is appreciated. Feel free to reveal your identity in the comments.

Though in my millenial (or Generation Z because I was born in the 2000s – I can’t keep up with these stupid generation things) mind, I feel like FB is totally outdated, I’m well aware that it might work for someone else, especially since it gives me a good amount of views.

Bloglovin’

I will say, this is a pretty great site to use to follow blogs, especially if you want to follow Blogger blogs or blogs that require you to sign up via e-mail, if you really hate it. I tend to only follow WordPress blogs and a couple blogs outside of that on the site, so I definitely need to work on branching out more.

You’ve probably heard about that whole controversy a couple months ago where people were saying that Bloglovin’ was stealing your views; here’s a post from Ashley @ Nose Graze about the whole thing. Personally, I didn’t care that much at the time because I don’t have too many followers in the first place, nor a lot a views on my posts. Also, I think I have a good amount of views on my posts on WordPress that I just really don’t care if I miss out on 6. But I’m sure there are some people out there who have a large amount of followers and have all their posts go viral on Bloglovin’ that it really bothers them. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those popular users.

I’ve actually started to get a lot of traction from Bloglovin’ the last couple of weeks, which is pretty awesome! My followers and interaction has grown a lot, so this one isn’t actually too bad!

Goodreads

(Does this count as social media? I’m counting it.)

So, if you’ve been living under a rock for a while, you’ve probably not heard of Goodreads, which I’d probably say is the biggest book-reviewing site out there. Mostly what people do on the site is review books, but you can also gain Friends, keep track of your reading, join groups, etc. 

I tried to re-start a Goodreads account a couple months ago, but it was just so much work, that I gave up (again). Since I was only on there for a couple of days, I can’t say if it’s good promotion or not, but you can definitely join groups dedicated to finding book bloggers and gaining more of a readership, which is always great! Personally, I feel like Goodreads is more of a way to advertise to publishers that you cross-post on other places, and I don’t necessarily think a large readership on there translates to blog readership, but someone probably knows more than me who actually uses the site!

Pinterest

I feel like this is another meh way of promoting posts. I mean, you can add your stuff to Pinterest, but unless you have a large amount of followers, I feel like it’ll get lost. I mean, if one of your pins gets extremely popular, that would be great because it gets the top search and gets spread a lot, and maybe people will go ahead and visit your blog? But, I feel like this is more for people who write a lot of “Help/Blogging Tips”-like posts and also have gorgeous pictures as graphic headers to draw people’s eyes to actually check it out.

I have a personal account that I basically haven’t used for pretty much a year (I should delete it, but I don’t really care enough to do it), and I actually made one for my blog for, like, a week, and even though I actually got two or so referrals (I don’t even know HOW), it just seemed pretty useless and no one repinned my stuff. I did it for only a couple of weeks, though, so I’m not a good resource. I’m impatient; don’t blame me.

Books Amino

You’ve probably never heard of this app before in your life, but I absolutely love it! I’d say this app is sort of like blogging-lite; you ask questions, do fun quizzes, create polls, post your writing, write discussion posts, review books, etc. And it’s very easy to link other posts and web pages and insert pictures and format things.

I used to do full-blown posts on the site, but after I started blogging, I’ve basically just linked to my posts, which does well for me. Unfortunately, since Books Amino isn’t as big as Twitter and Instagram, WordPress doesn’t calculate their views, so I can’t find out how many views I’m getting from there, but people comment on the app, so that means people there are obviously reading! I actually have found some other book bloggers on the site, not to mention that I have over one thousand followers on there, so it’s sort of my biggest platform.

And, that’s it!

I think I covered a lot of the social media platforms that can correlate with blogging, though I feel like I might be missing out on one or two because there are JUST SO MANY. But I tried as hard as I could to talk about all my experiences with all of them and impart some of my ~wisdom~.

Separately, this is the last time I’m going to promote Project Big Blogger, Little Blogger! I’m so surprised from the response I’ve already received (I thought for sure this would flop and I’d only have, like, two responses)! I’ll be closing the link tomorrow morning and sending out e-mails this week, so don’t miss your window of opportunity if you want to hop in! The link to the Google form is right here, so fill it out if it’s something you’re interested in! And if you want to learn more about the actual project, the post is right here. Feel free to share or join in!

What social medias do you use for your blog? Which one do you think is the most effective way to promote your own blog or posts?

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