Blogging and the use of Social Media
Try to aim for an article a week if possible. With a larger subject span this is going to be easier. Ask others in the department to give positive comments to articles this helps build up traffic to blog. Favourable comments also works in a similar way to testimonials from happy customers. Aim for posts of between 300-500 words this is just long enough to keep readers interested plus it is far easier to continue regular posts when they are shorter. Essay length posts are time consuming and do not always encourage readership. Having said that break the rules once in a while variety helps no end.
Authors
The more authors you have contributing to the blog the quicker the article source will grow. It is good to have a cross section of personalities producing the work not everyone enjoys the same writing tastes this will help you appeal to a greater audience. Perhaps consider a ‘guest author’ this could give you plenty of advertising potential which will work well over twitter and also increase interest in your blog.
Articles
If you can link articles to further information in previous articles or from other websites this will help promote the blog through the search engines. Also it will encourage further traffic through those links. By adding comments to other articles from other blogs you also help send traffic to yours. Most if not all blogs give the chance to leave your web URL when leaving a comment so it is free advertising from the other blogs to yours.
Using a blog aggregator helps let people know your blog is there. These can be found on websites like blog explosion or technorati these allow you to ‘ping’ your blog to alert the search engines that it is there. Blog optimisation saturation of the fittest gives an example of blog optimisation and ways to help get the blog noticed.
Twitter – getting accounts listed in Twellow (Twitter Yellow pages) under subject specific categories is a useful endeavour this allows your account and information to be more easily sourced by those looking for subject specific information; this helps with ratings and credentials. Regular posts from Twitter help to encourage followers as well as promoting information on a real time basis on a global scale. Use of Socialoomph makes scheduling updates much easier. These can be set as recurring updates or simply set singular updates to post at regular times. A short session spent setting the recurring updates help promote information on a regular basis. Socialoomph offers a free service or the professional service adds far more to the posting capabilities at a cost of roughly £20 a month. Ping.fm offers a chance to post over a variety of networks simultaneously this is a free service that may be worth considering.
Facebook it is worth looking into adding relevant pages per subject within the Facebook account again this encourages interaction and allows further scope for linking posts from the blog with relevant subject matter. Facebook pages vs groups gives a detailed breakdown of the pros and cons of each. Choose the best medium that suits your subject guidelines. Again you can have a variety of contributors adding to the Facebook pages that again helps promote any messages you wish to convey. It is worth considering starting groups within Facebook that cover the topics mentioned on the blogs again another avenue for promotion these groups and highlighted posts can be shown in the updates on Twitter Ping etc. Linking YouTube to these accounts also helps with promotion. All of these social media considerations take time. Yes they can help promote brand and marketing tremendously but the amount of time taken to administer these networks need to be considered. An alternative is to out source the social media branding this can be done for a small fee that ensures your social media needs are always considered. Executive Virtual Consultancy offers such a service.
Social media is a friendly way of promoting Brand the potential for growth from such a campaign is phenomenal. Such promotions can become addictive when you see the potential customer reach through this type of campaign. Social media works, hence why it is such a hot topic at present. The next election is likely to see a vast increase in just such a campaign and once the results show how quickly social media promotes your message there will very likely be a greater buy in to these types of campaigns.