The very best kind of blogging you can do is something I like to call “Social Blogging.” We tend to think of “blogging” and “social media” as two separate and distinct categories in our Web Marketing arsenal, but really these two activities go hand-in-hand. In fact, if you start thinking of your blogging more in terms of social and your social more in terms of blogging, you’ll benefit greatly on both fronts. Here’s how…
Blogging Is The Original Social Media
We always remind our clients that “Blogging is the original social media.” And it’s true! Long before Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all the others showed up on the scene, blogging was singlehandedly responsible for building relationships online. (If you’ve been around long enough, you still remember those days, right?)
One of our classic formulas for getting better online marketing results is this: Content + Influence = Authority (which you can also translate as Content + Sharing = Results). This is exactly why “Social Blogging” as a strategy works so well.
When you blog, you have a reason to stand up and make a statement on social networks. After all, the revolution of social media is simply that it made sharing easier and more fun. But just because Twitter and Facebook are easy to use doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be working hard to build substance into your social.
To Be Social, You Need To Share
The key to success in social media is to have something to share. Yes, you need to share other people’s content and sharing random stuff you just like. But to knock it out of the park and get definitive results, you’ve got to be sharing your own content frequently. And yes, that means you need to create content you can share — aka social blogging. 🙂
Most small business social strategies fail because they either put too much emphasis on their own content or they never share their own content at all. You definitely need to strike the right balance to make this work.
Tis Better To Give Than To Receive
At the end of the day, that old adage applies to social media just as much as it did in pre-school — “It is better to give than to receive.” Social media is about giving, sharing, and exchanging. When you have your own content (blog posts) and you actively share that content on your favorite networks (social media), you have a simple but effective web marketing strategy you can follow: Social Blogging.
What about you? Are you “Social Blogging” already? Leave your comment below.
