If you’re a regular reader of SteitBlog, you will know that I always stress on two things; killer content and socializing. Socializing has really great effects on your blog and on you personally. You may have read earlier, the post in which I shared the achievements of SteitBlog in its first month. I was really impressed with the results, and the feedback I received from the readers and other friends was really amazing, but also they were a bit shocked on this achievement within this short period of time. One of the key reasons of such an achievement is socializing and in my case, I launched SteitBlog after building a good presence online and through social media which helped me a lot. You need to be out there, you need to get to know people and make people know you.
Be everywhere
What does it take from you to create an account on different social networks, even the ones you won’t be using regularly? It takes no time, every registration takes no more than 2 minutes, all you need to do is to fill in your information and customize your profile. Registering an account with your name in networks that you will never use will help you avoid others registering your name and black mail you or just use it in a way that would harm your brand. There is a tool online called “know em”, this tool will help you know where your user name is available and where it’s not.
Connect with others
Social presence with no friends is useless; therefore you should increase your list of friends in order to be able to convert them into loyal readers. One VERY important point since we mentioned increasing friends’ lists; be aware not to use these automatic friends following tools, mainly for Twitter! A proper list of followers should be under the niche that you are writing about! At least 80% of your followers and followings should be interested in your niche, otherwise you’ll have a HUGE list of friends whom are not interested in what you blog about, and therefore, won’t be visiting your blog.
Interact with your friends
Having a list of friends, that took a while to build, and staying quite will make people stop following you because you are not being active! You should show them a reason why they should really wait for your updates, show them what you know and since you will most probably share an area of interest, they will be impressed of your knowledge and will stay tuned for your updates. Interacting with your friends will definitely help in converting them into readers and they will also spread the word about you and your blog.
Be friendly and offer help (when you can)
Remember that you are in a phase in which you are building a good reputation of you and your blog. You need to make people love you and this could be done by being friendly; say what they would love to hear and keep the rest to yourself, by offering a helping hand always does the trick too. If you find one of your friends asking for help in an area which you are very knowledgeable about, why don’t you offer to help? Trust me it will end up with a loyal reader that will spread the word about you and your blog. What I’ve done is, I’ve made a couple of filters on TweetDeck on specific topics that I think I can offer help in when it comes to them.
Be generous
I have offered to give Google Wave invitations to my readers earlier within a post on SteitBlog, LinkedIn profile and Twitter. Doing this really increased the number of page views and new visitors, it gave me a chance to interact personally with my readers and friends and made those friends love my blog and trust me. What more can I ask for? Those couple of friends, whom I gave the invitations to, will spread the word about me and my blog, there is nothing better than word of mouth.
Be yourself
Be yourself and never put on an act! People will follow you because of you and if you fake your attitude or knowledge they will find out soon and will stop following you, and I don’t think anybody likes to loose friends, it would also affect your reputation in the industry
One-to-one conversations
Dedicating 15 minutes of your time everyday to contact 2 or 3 of your friends by email personally, will never harm your work or consume your time. In the contrary, it will help you build a better brand, spread the word and obtain more readers. Readers love attention, this will show them that you are aware of them, and you care about their opinions and feedback. Some people ask, how could a couple of readers help me increase my traffic and build my brand? Easily, such a loyal reader will spread the word about you and your blog much more than an AdWords campaign will! Invest in people and friends; they are who count at the end of the day.
Socializing is not closed to Social Networks only, socializing could be by joining forums and participating and building a name over there. Also you can socialize through commenting on others’ blogs, by giving feedback on their products, articles, blogs or whatever. Try to participate in private betas as well and of course provide the owners with your feedback and suggestions, they will appreciate and love it. You can also socialize in the real world, not only virtually, participate in conferences, attend speeches, join public activities and help others out there.
Interesting Articles
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Subscribe to SteitBlog's Newsletter
You will be receiving EXCLUSIVE updates that is not available on the blog in addition to IMPORTATNT announcements. I will NOT be sending the newsletter on monthly or weekly basis, I will send it ONLY if I have something to share.
1- I will not share your details.
2- I will not spam you.
Loading ...
{ 4 trackbacks }
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
@mikecj
November 8, 2009 at 2:47 pmVery true. I’ve seen this happen a few times now, where people have built up a strong SM presence on Twitter, over several months, then launched a blog to an explosive start.
Sound tactic.
@robertbravery
November 8, 2009 at 2:55 pmToo many people miss the boat when it comes to Social Media sites and Social networking. Hello everyone, the word is Social, not Marketing or sales.
I get so irritated when All I see from some Twitter Idiot, is how to make money, buy my stuff, ect.
Good post
@techcrunchies
November 9, 2009 at 11:29 amI very much agree Firas..All along I had made the mistake of thinking tht my website is built for Google and worked only towards that. But now, I have been seeing the importance of building the network that will help you build your site much bigger.
Very nice article..
@nicchick
November 28, 2009 at 2:18 amFiras, I am just LOVING reading yours and @mikecj’s blogs at the moment.
The are always spot on the mark with the advice you give. Its digestable, not overly simplified yet easy enough for everyone to follow and understand.
And, its great to read blog posts and nod along at all the things you are already doing :)
Keep up the good work.
Nicky