Engaging with Listeners and Thanking the Sponsor

Hello and welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast episode 8 and day 8 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, where your challenge today is to do an audit on one of your social media accounts and to come up with a plan for the future of that account. Including the creation of an editorial calendar. Show notes for today’s episode are at problogger.com/podcast/8. 

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Hi. It’s Darren here from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 8 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Today, we’re going to talk about social media. My challenge to you is to choose one of your social media accounts, to do a bit of an audit on, to do some analysis, to ask some tough questions.

Most bloggers are pretty active on social media but it’s pretty easy to just drift along with it and not use it as effectively as you could. In fact, it’s pretty easy for it to start hurting your blogging as well, whether it be using social media as a distraction away from blogging itself, whether it’s just getting off target in terms of the topic—letting automation get in the way of useful tweeting—or standing to use social media in a more dated way. 

This is the case for me. I recently realized that I’d let ProBlogger’s social media accounts sleep a little. Social media has always been important for ProBlogger and it’s always sent us pretty good traffic to the blog, but I’d become a little bit distracted with other elements of my business that have been going well. 

Digital Photography School’s so much bigger, so I’ve focus so much attention on it that I become a little bit complacent with the ProBlogger, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. My tweets and updates on Facebook could become a bit sporadic. On Facebook, particularly, there will be days where I wouldn’t post anything. Sometimes three or four days in a row. Most of my tweets and Facebook updates have become a bit visually boring. Sometimes I even went off-topic or I became a little bit focused upon selling and ignored other things that I wanted to do with those accounts like engaging with my readers. 

I decided something needed to change. I put aside a whole morning to come up with a new plan and to analyze what had been going on on my accounts. That’s what today’s challenge is about. You probably don’t need to spend a whole morning on it. What I want to encourage you today is just to focus upon one of your social media accounts. You might want to do this later with another one as well. 

The first question you might want to ask is, which social network is best for my site? This is a big picture question that’s useful to ask. Over time, different social account networks emerge and some of them pull away and die. It’s good to ask this question every now and again. Where are my readers engaging in social media? You might get in touch with your readers on this by simply running a poll or a survey on your blog asking them in a blog post where they are engaging.

Another way to get a handle on it is to look at what other bloggers in your niche are doing. Where are they engaging? That might give you some hints. 

The other thing you can do is to get into your Google Analytics or metrics program and actually look at where traffic is coming from. What social sites send your traffic? Are there any that are sending you traffic that you’re not engaging on?

We recently realized at Digital Photography School that we got quite a bit of traffic from Pinterest. At that time, we didn’t have a Pinterest account. That was a hint for us to go and do something there. Is there a social media account that you need to start?

The other question now to ask is, are you focusing a lot of energy on one particular social network that’s not getting any traction? Do you need to pull back and actually stop using that network? Do you need to change your approach in some way? These are some big picture questions you could ask. 

Now, I want you to focus on one social network. It might be Twitter, it might be Facebook, it might be LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest. Just focus in on one and start asking some of these questions. How are you using it?

One thing that you can do is to actually work out the percentages of your updates that would fit into different categories. For instance, driving traffic back to your blog might be one of the categories. Community engagement and interaction, discussion might be another category. Asking questions for research, selling. All of these categories legitimately can be used on social media. What percentage of your posts would fit into each category? Work it out. Looking back over the last 50 or so tweets or updates on Facebook, ask yourself, is this in balance? Am I doing too much of any one thing? 

I mentioned earlier, I felt like I was selling a bit too much on the ProBlogger Facebook page recently, so I needed to change that balance. I needed to focus more on community interaction and driving traffic. Particularly, driving traffic to old posts because I realized I was only sharing links to new posts that were coming out on the blog. I had a whole heap of useful information in my archives that I could similarly be sharing on my Facebook page. 

Another question to ask is, how much time am I putting into this social media account? This might be a bit of a confronting question for some of us because some of us spend way too much time on social media. Is the time that you’re putting in getting the benefits out that reflect the time you’re putting in? Some of you may not be putting enough time into it. Maybe you’re only putting in five minutes every month and you might want to change that, too. 

Another good question to ask is, am I using any kind of automation on my account? Many of us set up automation, where we share links when we’ve got a new blog post going up or we might share certain posts to keep going up at certain intervals. These can be quite useful. I’m going to share with you a tool later that I use. Over time, some of these automated posts can actually become a bit dated and it can be useful to go back and change your approach. 

Another good question to ask is, what voice am I doing my updates in? Am I writing in a personal conversational tone? Am I using writing in the third person or the first person? Am I being funny? Am I being formal? Is there any clash there with the different voices on your account?

Another good question to ask is, what kind of editorial plan do I have if any? I know many people just use social media when they feel like it. As a result, you can end up with 20 tweets in 10 minutes and then nothing for two days. Do you have any kind of plan? What would be the ideal in terms of timing of your posts? How often should you be posting? What types of posts? What are the goals of your posts and the outcomes that you want? I’ll talk to you in a minute about the editorial plan and what I do.

Another question you can ask is to dig into the stats of your blog. Go into your Google Analytics account and actually look at the kind of traffic that is being driven from your social media accounts. What type of posts seem to do best? What types of posts don’t work? 

The other type of stats you can dig into, depending on the social network, is the stats that you’re given by that social network. Facebook Insights have a lot of information that you can really dig into. Twitter also has stats that you can dig into. Dig into the stats and have a look at what type of posts work best. Not only the topics of the posts, but also the format. 

On Facebook, you can share text type posts. You can use images, you can use videos. Which ones are working best for you? Actually building a spreadsheet and doing some analysis on this type of stuff can be really useful and show you the type of things that you might want to continue to do more of. Were there certain posts that worked well that you could do again at some point in the future? Where are they in the headlines? Certain words that seem to trigger a response in your followers? What topics seem to trigger people to click on links? What topic seems to trigger discussion? What topics seem to trigger shares? Also, look at when your users are online. What times of tweets seem to be working well or Facebook updates? Facebook gives you some good stats on this.

Some other questions to ask, other features that you’re not using. Sometimes social networks add features that we never use. Pinned posts might be one. I found recently on Twitter when I pinned a post, it really extends the life of that post a lot. I haven’t found if it works so well on Facebook but it might work for you. It might be something to experiment with. 

Do you need to update your avatar (your header image) to reflect your brand? Do you need to update your profile description or the links in your profiles? You need to start experimenting with video. Particularly on Facebook at the moment, it seems to be working well. 

Another thing that’s worked well for us on Facebook, recently, is starting groups. While our pages don’t seem to be getting through Facebook algorithms so readily, we find Facebook groups work well. Maybe that’s something to experiment with, too.

The other thing is to focus on your visual content. How visual is your content? This was really confronting for me as I looked through the Twitter feed on ProBlogger’s account a few months ago and realized that I hardly had any images in there at all. The web is such a visual place and I’d been ignoring it. Team up on a site using tools like Canva, PicMonkey or even KeyNote or PowerPoint to design some images to insert into your feed.

The last thing I’d encourage you to think about is to design an editorial calendar. This simply is to design your ideal of how often you want to tweet or update on your Facebook page or LinkedIn, and what types of posts you might have. 

On ProBlogger on my Facebook page, my editorial calendar is really simple. I’ve just identified four times per day that I want to do a post and at certain times of the day, I want to do different types of posts. At one time of the day, I’ll update any new post that I’ve had on ProBlogger. At another time of the day, I’ll ask a question that engages my readership. Another time of the day, I’ll link to an archived post. Something that’s a year or two old but still relevant for today.

By setting aside these specific times in the day—I choose the time based upon when my audience is online—I’m starting to be more regular with my content, but I’m also doing different types of posts at different times of the day. I mix them up from time-to-time as well so that my audience is being engaged in different ways and I’m achieving all of my objectives. On a daily basis, I don’t include selling, but on a weekly basis, I’ll throw in one or two selling type posts as well. 

I’ve done the same thing for Twitter and I used a tool on Twitter called MeetEdgar. It’s a paid tool. There are other free tools out there but MeetEdgar is the only one that I’ve found that enables me to build a library of tweets. I’ve built up 500 or 600 tweets in my ProBlogger library and I’ve set certain intervals for these tweets to go out at.

Now, I’m still adding my own personal tweets every day and these are not automated at all. These are more interactive, more things that I’m doing, but there are these certain evergreen kinds of tweets that mainly link back to old posts on the site, questions or slides that I’ve developed, or images that I found helpful. I find that this helps me to be more regular and also helps me to be more visually appealing on my site. You might want to check out that tool for yourself but there are others out there that enable you to schedule tweets like Buffer as well. 

Really, the key today is to dig into one of your social media accounts and to ask some tough questions. Be a little bit harder on yourself. Is it being used effectively? If not, what changes need to happen? What time do you need to put aside to make those changes happen? 

One of the things that I’ve started to do recently is to make appointments with myself to make the changes that need to happen. I know I can come up with a long list of things I need to improve, but unless I actually diarize when I’m going to make those changes nothing ever happens.

For instance, for me that means every morning at a quarter past nine, I dedicate 10 minutes to Twitter and Facebook. I also dedicate 10 minutes later in the day at about 1:30 PM, and then in the evenings, I dedicate a few minutes as well. Just by putting aside those three 10 minute blocks every day, I’ve noticed that I’ve started to become much more regular, engaging, and useful in my social media accounts. That has a massive impact, so diarize when you’re going to implement these changes. Also, diarize when you’re going to reassess these changes. 

Maybe a month from today, diarize that you’re going to reassess the Twitter account that you’ve just looked at today or the Facebook page. How have those changes gone? Look at the stats again. Have things improved? If they have not, you might want to continue to tweak. If they have been working, you might want to build upon some of the changes that you’ve already put in place.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode of the ProBlogger Podcast. I would love to hear how you found this challenge. I’m sure others are participating in the challenge. I also would like to hear what you’ve done so head to problogger.com/podcast/8, which is where you’ll find the show notes for today’s episode. 

There’s an opportunity to comment there and to let us know how you found this challenge, what you’re actually implementing today, the decisions that you make, the things that you’ve learned through doing this audit. It’s really important to not only do things, but I found this challenge really comes alive when we’re interacting with other bloggers on the same journey. Again, head to problogger.com/podcast/8 and let us know what you think of today’s episode. 

Also, I’d love to get your review of this podcast. Now, many of you have done it on iTunes and I do thank you for your reviews there. Please do keep them coming in. But if you’re listening to this podcast on Stitcher, we’ve got one review. I know others are listening on Stitcher. So far, we’ve just got one and I do appreciate your review. Foos, who left the review, “Thanks for a great podcast. It was just what I needed to kickstart my blog again.”

That’s certainly a theme we’ve heard in a lot of the reviews, people using this challenge to get back into blogging. If you’re on Stitcher please leave us a review. We’d love to have another one added to Foos’ and I’d really appreciate that. Also, if you’re on iTunes, you’re more than welcome to review and rate us there. It does help us to get a little bit more visibility. 

Lastly, I want to thank 99designs who’ve got a great offer for you as a listener of this podcast. They’re a service that I’ve used numerous times over the years to create great graphics for my blogs and other projects like this podcast, and they’d like to do the same for you today. If you need a new logo or some other graphic design element for your blog or project visit 99designs.com/problogger. As a ProBlogger Podcast listener, you’ll get a free $99 upgrade to users on your first design with them. 

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. I will chat with you tomorrow on day 9 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.