Marketing is a complicated field to tackle. You can spend thousands on advertising, only to end up with meager results, and upticks on your WordPress blog’s traffic. What’s needed is a cost-effective way to promote your site and attract visitors.

The solution is to utilize the various social media platforms available. Due to their lack of cost, they enable savvy users to market their sites without having to spend a dime – if they understand how to reach their audiences, that is.

In this piece, we’ll present four techniques to promote your WordPress blog. While they won’t turn it into a hit overnight, they will provide you with an alternative source of traffic, boost your engagement, and help cement your reputation in your chosen industry.

Let’s get started!

1. Use Images to Boost Engagement

Using images properly is the simplest technique you can employ to increase reader engagement – and this maxim applies across all platforms, not only social media. Of course, this only works if they’re relevant to the content at hand. Take this article’s featured image as an example – it provides a simple visual cue as to the content’s substance.

To start things off, you’ll need to find and source a relevant image (a process we’ve discussed in depth previously), then attach it to your content. Let’s use Twitter as an example – write a short tweet teasing the content and payoff for a specific blog post, include a link, and click on Add photos or video to attach your chosen image:

Attaching a relevant picture clearly makes the tweet look more compelling, and distinguishes itself on your reader’s timelines. In addition, this works across all social media platforms that enable you to attach pictures to your content.

2. Use Contests to Incentivize Social Sharing

Now we’ve warmed up, let’s try something a bit more complex – using contests to create an incentive for users to share your content.

Usually, people share content for personal reasons such as:

• Providing valuable content to their friends.
• Showing how they feel about certain topics.
• Improving their relationships by keeping in touch through social sharing.

Regardless of the reasoning, the underlying motive for sharing content is personal gain. A social contest rewards its users for reaching out to others through social media, provides a desirable prize, and enables its contestants to feel positive by sharing the opportunity with their friends.

Setting up a social contest using WordPress is simple, thanks to plugins such as Contests by Rewards Fuel:

Once installed and activated, a new option will appear under the Settings tab of your WordPress dashboard, and from here you’ll be directed to the plugin’s homepage to open a free account. After clicking on the Create a new contest option to begin, you’ll proceed to the contest creation screen:

Here, choose your contest’s name and the start and finish dates, then add a description and upload a relevant image (put what you learned during step one to use!). Next, pick your entry methods:

Each platform comes with different options. For example, Facebook enables you to use likes as entries. Finally, we select a prize (it can be anything you want) and our contest will be good to go!

To insert it into WordPress, select the corresponding option during the last screen of the contest creation process, copy the generated shortcode, and paste it into a page of your choosing:

3. Establish Yourself as an Authority on Social Media

People lend more credence to the opinions of perceived authority figures, both online and in real life. Over time, your WordPress blog can gain enough relevance to become a go-to resource if managed properly – but ideally, you should be cultivating your authority across multiple channels.

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the perfect social media platforms when it comes to increasing your public profile. Let’s go over some simple techniques for each platform:

1. Sharing relevant content for your industry shows you’re up to date with the latest developments. One way to go about this is by joining related Facebook groups, and sharing content regularly to foster conversations. This enables you to maintain a high-profile, and increase your authority.
2. Monitoring related keywords using the Twitter search function can lead to opportunities for discussing your industry with others. This enables you to engage with interested parties, and often pad out your follower count thanks to the exposure.
3. Checking your LinkedIn network updates shouldn’t be undervalued either, and you should take the opportunity to comment on your connection’s activities if you have any good advice to share.

These techniques are simple at their core – maintain a high-profile, and always provide actionable advice (linking back to your blog when possible). If you put these principles to action, your authority will naturally increase over time.

4. Figure Out What People Want to Know

Social media platforms provide a perfect medium for people to voice their frustrations publicly and ask for help – even when it comes to highly specific topics – and we can use this to our advantage.

This technique is very similar to the last one considering it works best for Facebook groups, Twitter searches, and LinkedIn connections. Locate Facebook groups for your industry using its search function, monitor keywords on Twitter, and add like-minded professionals to your LinkedIn connections.

Once done, all that’s left is to sit back and listen – or in this case watch what they’re writing. See which topics are gaining traction, look out for common problems, and write blog posts to tackle these subjects. This enables you to promote your blog organically, while also helping people within your industries community.

Conclusion

Using social media to market yourself is not without its downfalls. If you want to increase your presence organically, you’ll have to invest time into engaging with your followers, which in turn helps them to boost your blog’s presence.

The upside is that this process can be highly rewarding, especially if you’re the kind of person who is focused on helping your readers (which you surely are!).

To promote your WordPress blog on social media, keep these four techniques in mind:

1. Use images to boost engagement on your social media posts.
2. Use contests to incentivize social sharing.
3. Establish yourself as an authority figure on social media.
4. Write blog posts based around relevant industry issues you come across on social media.

Are there any social media marketing tips you’d like to share with us? Let us know in the comments section below!