The social media phenomenon doesn't appear to be diminishing. In fact, everywhere I look or listen, people are talking about it, writing about it, or actively getting involved in it. For this reason, and because now I am such a super-blogger, I thought I'd write about using social media to help your blogging in particular and why I find it very helpful.
As soon as you start blogging, you can attract a crowd from search engines. This is probably happening completely unbeknown to you, especially if you're like many bloggers and you are posting for fun. My shrewd business mind however realizes that the more people find me through search engines, the more likely they are to end up at Century 21, and hopefully that means our business will continue to grow.
Another way to get people to your blog, and in my case, our real estate web site, is through social media. It's one of the few ways you can reach a public without actually spending any money. You do have to spend time though. By becoming a part of social media, you're beginning to build your own community. This community follows you and hopefully likes what you have to say, and participates in the community where they can. Think facebook for example and how many people are interacting and participating on each other's walls all the time.
The other big social media site that has everyone a-twitter is of course, Twitter. (Oh, such a comedian! I don't know how I do it.) Twitter has gone from strength to strength and realistically when I first looked at it, I thought well, if the PM tweets, who am I not to? And if you use Twitter to connect to your blog or website, you are going to drive even more traffic to the places you want people to end up.
So, notes on tweeting. Try not to retweet too much, and make your account clear when it comes to your topics. You want people who are genuinely interested in your content to follow you – they're more likely to end up being of value. I want people following Century 21 tweets to care about what I'm tweeting.
Another important thing to remember though, is that social media was established for fun. Communications, yes, and that's why it's great to link to your blog, but essentially it's about communicating in a fun way. So with my fun content and my fun way of communicating it, I must be some kind of social media guru!