However, all of these things become a mayor "side hustle." Blogging is no longer writing an article and publishing it. Instead, you need to find and, more importantly, make the time to share it on social media. Since you cannot only share your blog posts, you also have to dream up of other content to share. This in turn means extra work load that needs to be fitted into your schedule.
Since social media is in its truest form witchcraft anyway, this is more of a guide of dos and don'ts that I follow.
Twitter:
Twitter is probably the platform I am most comfortable with because, at least for me, it feels the most free to use. Furthermore, I've been using it for the longest and even before making an account for this blog.
The rules I follow on Twitter are rather simple:
- don't promote two of my blog posts on the same day
- keep to my plugging schedule
- try not to let the same type of post - but especially my own post plugs - clash
Otherwise it is pretty free form. Sometimes I use buffer to schedule funnier posts for a later stage when I know that I am going to find it harder to separate two of my own link posts. I also don't make sure that I post at least 10 times (or whatever number an article says) per day. On Twitter, it is relative free. Even if I post 10 times on one day but only once the next - I feel it hardly makes a difference.
Organisation wise, this makes Twitter into the easier platform to handle. After all, I only schedule blog plugs. Those dates are written onto my diary and ticked off when I create them in buffer. The schedule is one I settled on about a year ago.
Facebook:
Facebook is less les ce faire. Since posts on Facebook linger around for much longer, I avoid posting more than once per day. Almost all my posts on Facebook are scheduled and then simply fall out of the queue. This leads to a rather stiff schedule that I have to write down. It also means that I can't simply post something new without consulting my calender.
While this sounds clinical and weird, the advantage is that you are offering new content almost daily. On Facebook, I try to make sure that there is a some variety in the content as well, so that it doesn't look like a link collection towards my blog. This is why I also post current reads there.
Instagram:
I use Instagram only for the book side of this blog since I want to fall back in love with the platform and not abide to angry"the algorithm is screwing me over" rants. Yet, I still write down when to post on Instagram because similar to Facebook, I want to avoid posting more than once a day.
Furthermore, it also helps me to keep track of what I am going to post in the future. After all some reviews are written months in advance, and thus simply writing a small "+ IG" in my calender underneath the post helps to me to keep in mind that I should make the time to open this app as well. If I happen to have two "insta-worthy" photos that belong to the same book review plug, I space them and note this down as well.
There is no standardized "when" for everyone. I was happy with having around 75 likes on Facebook before I decided to open up an Instagram account. For someone else this benchmark might be at 500 likes.
By writing down when you post, scheduling posts in advance, as well as leaving some space for creative project, you should be able to handle your social media platforms beautifully on the side as well.
I do struggle to keep up with social media as well as a blogging schedule so am always curious how other people do it. I think I understand from your bullet points on Twitter that you might have two posts you are pushing at the same time but you make sure you never promote them on the same day??
ReplyDeleteAnother question for you - for any one book review, how many times do you promote it on Twitter. One blogger tells me she does 5 Tweets on day 1, then 4 the next day, 3 the day after - then one in the following week and one in the following month. That sounds a lot....
Thank you for the comment. And yes, I try to avoid to promote the same post more than once a day because I am just not THAT active on twitter - I have a job and everything, so it would just look like 5 times the same promo post.
DeleteSo that also goes for your other question. 5 times a day would be far too much for me, maybe it works for them. I promote it three times. One time on Tuesday - when it's published. Saturday in the same week and Thursday three weeks later. That is the bookish schedule which interacts with my Wednesday posts - those are promoted on Wednesday, Friday and Monday two weeks later.
Hope that helps :)