First of all, I wanted to start off saying that I was just chosen as a speaker of an up-coming womens blogger conference! I’m super excited and am in stalker mode search of a sponsor to cover my very inexpensive travel costs! So if you are a business, or know of one, that caters to women and would love your brand in front (literally in front, as I’m speaking) of the best women bloggers, send me an e-mail to info@theladybloggers.com. I’ll send you more info about which conference, sponsorship rates, etc.
I’ve seen a lot of new debates going on about bloggers who instead of trying to get people to subscribe to their blog or follow them on GFC, are urging their readers to instead follow them on Twitter or on Facebook.
Why would you want to do that? Shouldn’t you get people to subscribe to your blog instead? Where you actually do all the writing and keep your content?
This is an awesome and smart move for bloggers as this is a great way to connect with people away from your blog. Sure, you want them to comment and visit, but you need to have a way for you to reach them in the first place. It’s a little less intimidating to click Like or Follow than to have to give up your e-mail address and name to be added to a mailing list.
It’s also a good idea to go the route of getting your readers to Like your page on Facebook or follow you on Twitter versus just subscribing to your blog because people change their minds about their blogs all the time. I’ve probably changed the theme or at least my url’s to blogs a million times. Then, it’s like you are having to start all over again getting new subscribers and readers. If you had them follow you on other social networks instead, and pushed that option, you can easily update all of your readers with your new status’.
No matter what you do with your blog, abandon it, change your theme, upgrade it, take it more seriously, you can always keep your readers with you in a separate area and still communicate with them.
Which one do you think works better for your blog and your goals?
I’m on facebook and twitter for my blog. Honestly, sometimes I wish I never went that route. It is a big time committment IMO. You can’t just be on there, you have to BE on there. And that takes time. I’m woefully neglectful. But, that said, I have “met” some super nice peeps through twitter and know that many love that form of communication. And, I do have a lot of friends on FB and know some prefer to read my post and “like” them there. So, I guess for me, it comes down to giving people what they want. My druthers would be just to have the blog itself and focus all my time there, but I think the social media train has left the building so I’m running to keep up.
I find twitter vital to my success as a blogger. I pick up a lot of traffic from there. However, I also find it very important to have a subscription service. However, more people use GFC than email subscription anymore lol
Well, I am new to the blogging scene as it is anyway. I’ve had my blog up and running for a month and have had 400+ page views. I created a FB page for my blog, and have yet to get any people to like it. That will take time, I’m sure of. But I think it can be a valuable tool. My problem however is that I don’t want to “push” the blog/brand onto people, I want them to come to it. But, in truth, I’m guessing that good business had some bad ethics… IDK. But, yea, FB is a good idea IMO! And congrats on the speaking engagement.
Funny that you mention branding. Besides being an interior designer, I actually blog or business in general and push people’s brand out there for them – especially people who don’t have time.
Check out our website: http://www.gstinglabs.com/Social.html on this and let me know if you would be interested in this service.
I think it’s important to establish a report on as many formats as possible. Some people tweet, while others only use FB. And some people don’t even have a Google reader. So the more options you give people to connect with you, the better!
I use all social networking sites. I just followed you on twitter @nightowlmama
I like having all because seems like Pr ask for numbers in everything but it’s hard to grow some networks