Top Social Media Platforms for Bloggers
Social media is one of the best ways to promote your websites. You can use it to get your articles to thousands of visitors, and promote them in search.
Social media is one of the best ways to promote your websites. You can use it to get your articles to thousands of visitors, and promote them in search.
Having a strong social media presence can be critical for growing your audience, driving traffic to your website, and building your brand. But with so many social media platforms out there, where do you start?
The answer won’t be the same for everybody. And you don’t want to spend time and money on the ones that won’t help you.
Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms. Nearly everyone’s on it, so it can be an incredibly powerful tool for reaching and engaging your audience.
On the other hand, they’re famous for throttling your reach. They want to keep people on their platform, not send them to your site.
This leads many bloggers into a complicated attempt to find the right balance of traffic-driving posts and posts that keep readers on Facebook. You can even end up creating content just for Facebook.
But there’s no doubt of the potential to reach a lot of new readers. You just have to decide how much time or money you’re willing to invest.
The Facebook Creators Program gives you a new way to earn money directly from Facebook. This can offset the lack of traffic from those posts you create to keep visitors on Facebook.
Who Should Be On Facebook?
Facebook’s audience trends a little bit older and a little bit wealthier than, say, TikTok. If this base works for your website, cultivating a Facebook page and/or group should be well worth your time.
Pinterest is actually a search engine, but it gets grouped in with social media. It’s a visual discovery platform, where visitors search for topics, get shown relevant images, and decide which ones to visit.
Pinterest’s user base is predominantly women (around 77%), so it’s particularly well-suited for bloggers covering topics such as fashion, home decor, DIY projects, food, and travel. Some people will tell you not to bother with Pinterest if you’re outside those niches.
While those niches will work best on Pinterest, it is possible to make nearly any niche work. The trick is to tailor some of your content to the Pinterest audience (women) and/or create content for Pinterest search terms.
Because of its emphasis on visual content, you will need to be able to make images and infographics that are visually appealing and shareable.
Flipboard, the digital magazine platform, has emerged as an especially good way to drive some traffic to your site. Unlike all of the others, Flipboard isn’t trying to keep people on its pages. It’s designed to send them to yours.
With its visually-driven, magazine-style layout, Flipboard is particularly well-suited for bloggers covering topics such as lifestyle, travel, food, and design. But niches that don’t work so well on Pinterest can work very well on Flipboard – such as politics or SEO or blogging.
The trick with Flipboard is that their algorithm heavily favors recently published articles. Sharing old evergreen content does work, just not as well. I find it’s worth the effort to republish evergreen content using Yoast’s Republish plugin, delete the cache on that page a couple of times, and then post it to Flipboard.
Tumblr
The reports of Tumblr’s death have been greatly exaggerated. This microblogging and social networking platform offers a unique opportunity for bloggers catering to niche communities.
With a user base that skews younger (over 60% of users are under 34 years old), Tumblr is a hub for subcultures, fandom communities, and creative expression. If you blog about the arts, music, literature, LGBTQ+ issues, and alternative lifestyles, you can find a thriving audience on Tumblr.
The platform’s emphasis on user-generated content and the ability to engage with like-minded individuals through reblogging and tagging make it an attractive choice for niche-focused bloggers.
Medium
Medium, the online publishing platform, has emerged as a go-to destination for bloggers and writers seeking to share their expertise and insights. With a focus on long-form, high-quality content, Medium attracts a diverse audience of readers interested in thought-provoking and informative articles.
Medium isn’t about sending traffic to your website, but they do pay some creators for the traffic they receive from Medium. So it’s basically a way to amplify your money making options online – although you can try to steer readers to your site, too.
Blogs on personal development, entrepreneurship, technology, and industry-specific knowledge can thrive on Medium.
While LinkedIn is primarily known as a professional networking platform, it can also be a powerful tool for bloggers in certain niches. Bloggers covering topics related to business, entrepreneurship, career development, and industry-specific expertise can find a receptive audience on LinkedIn.
By maintaining an active presence on LinkedIn, sharing your blog content, and engaging with your professional connections, you can position yourself as an authority in your field and attract readers who are interested in your insights and expertise. LinkedIn’s emphasis on thought leadership and professional development makes it a valuable platform for bloggers seeking to build their personal brand and reach a more specialized audience.
The issue that keeps me from trying LinkedIn is that it’s about promoting yourself, not your website. I blog anonymously so that doesn’t work for me.
YouTube
People love video, and despite TikTok, YouTube is still a solid platform for many niches, from lifestyle and DIY to educational and informational content. The trick is, you need to be able to make decent videos.
Some people just film themselves yapping on their phones and upload it and it works for them. Others spend hours editing, or hire someone to make their videos, and decide in the end it wasn’t worth it.
So there’s a steep learning curve to making it work. And if you’ve heard about the partner program, don’t count on it. Some people make good money with it, but it’s harder to get into than it used to be, and you earn less too.
It can be worth it, but there is a pretty big investment either in learning how to make it work for you or hiring people to do things for you.
Instagram?
Instagram is a visual-focused social media platform that has become increasingly popular among bloggers and content creators. Posts do not link to your site, so it’s extremely hard to drive even a trickle of traffic to your site.
Many bloggers don’t bother with it. I don’t. This is a sound decision for most of us who just want traffic. Instagram is for influencers, not website promotion.
But if you see yourself as a brand or influencer, or you have a shop and think you can make content that will drive people to find the URL and come to it, it can be valuable.
Twitter/X
Twitter is a fast-paced, real-time social media platform that can be a valuable tool for bloggers. It can be good if you’re selling courses or building a brand.
It’s less effective at sending traffic to websites, in my experience, but it can be done. At the very least, I use my social media scheduler to tweet out links to articles I’ve published. This takes so little effort, and it usually sends at least a few visitors.
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