Transform Your Tutoring Blog from a Wall Flower into a Socialite
When bloggers first start out, they agonize about their lack of comments, lack of blog traffic, and sometimes even the lack of support from family & friends. You might wonder at first, “If my family is not reading my blog, who will?”
You need to amass a unique and personal following for your blog, but it will work on your part to get there! There’s an old fable about a poor man who prayed to a saint’s statue everyday to because he wanted to win the lottery. He begged and pleaded with her everyday. “Please, please, please saint, help me win the lottery!” However, he never did. After many months and months of pleading everyday to the statue, the statue suddenly came to life and looked at the poor beggar, “If you want to win the lottery,” he said to the stunned man, “please, please, please buy a ticket!”
So, if you’re wishing and hoping that your blog would gain more traction and a bigger following, here are a few actionable items you can do to help transform it from a wall flower into the socialite of the tutoring world.
Leave Meaningful Comments on other Blogs
You can’t amass a following for your blog without following others. The first mistake that most new bloggers make is not being social enough with their community members and leaders. However, I warn many of you not to comment with the intent of getting comments back. Instead, try to add some helpful point of discussion or constructive argument to the blog post.
Be Thankful, Always
Though it may seem that at first your comments and interactions mean very little, sooner or later, you might see that you’re attracting new visitors to your own blog as well as fostering connections in the blogging community. Eventually, if you’re consistent and memorable, other bloggers will start RTing your posts, commenting on your blog, or even better, linking to your work.
As your blog grows and gains some traction, you may feel that you can take a break from the social work at hand. Not true, consistency is important even as you become better known in the community. Even Gary Vaynerchuk, who has his own wine show and vast internet fame, still takes time to respond to tweets from people he doesn”t know on Twitter.
Be thankful for all your followers and continue to foster those relationships well into your 1st, 2nd, or even 10th year of blogging!
Add Multiple Social Sharing Buttons
One way to get started is to start adding social sharing buttons to your blog to make it more social. Though it may seem like overkill to have many social sharing buttons on your website (and sometimes it can be), there are many blogging tools out there that perform different social functions. When used in coordination properly, they create a unique social tapestry that make it easier for your visitors to recommend your blog posts and share your posts with others.
In this video from the Social Media Examiner, Mari Smith discusses
Important Video Takeaways and Tips
- Tweetmeme is a twitter sharing service (available as a plugin through WordPress) that helps bloggers customize the tweets their visitors send. After downloading this tool, you have the option to choose how you want to pre-populate the tweets your visitors send.
- It’s best to position the Facebook like Button at the top and bottom of your blog posts.
- You can change the verbiage of the Facebook like Button to anything you’d like. Mari Smith recommends changing the verbiage to “recommend” instead of “like”
- Facebook share button comes with a counter that allows visitors to see how often it has been shared. (This button is also available through WordPress)
- LinkedIn Share button is relatively new. Mari recommends that when you create the LinkedIn button you use the LinkedIn share counter.
- Digg Digg Plugin is a collection of plugins which you can customize to follow your visitors as they scroll down the page
- Sexy Bookmarks on WordPress has nifty buttons that pop up as you scroll over them.
- Wibiya Toolbar is a an interactive tool bar which allows your visitors to interact with your latest tweets, YouTube Videos, Facebook page without leaving your page.
- Mari”s Hot marketing Tip – Though it’s fantastic to have a diverse social media presence on your blog, Mari Smith recommends also making sure that it’s easy for your visitors to your blog to sign up by email. Mari recommends using Awebber or Feedburner (free)
featured photo by Brandon Christopher Warren
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