FAQ: Social Media
August 26, 2015
As a Typepad subscriber, if you've ever had a question about blogging, chances are you've either perused our handy Knowledge Base, browsed the archives here at Everything Typepad, or opened a Help Ticket in your Dashboard. Our Community and Support team receives many of these every day, and in this special series, we'll be answering some of our best, most Frequently Asked Questions.
What is Social Media?
Social Media is a social networking website or a collective of online channels that allow you to communicate to a large audience online at once.
Why should I promote on Social Media?
Social Media is a pretty big deal and used by just about everyone, from the biggest Fortune 500 company to your local foodie blogger. Social Media has become the main way to drive traffic to your web page and communicate with your followers. If you care about building your blog audience, Social Media is key in keeping your community engaged and informed outside of your blog and bring your followers back to your blog.
If you use your blog to promote your business or sell a product, more platforms are now beta-testing "Buy" features so people can buy from you directly from a tweet or pin. With options like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more, we know this can all be overwhelming and you may not have time to sign in to every account and share your latest blog post. We have some time saving tips later in this post.
What is integrated with Typepad? Can I share updates on Facebook/Twitter?
At Account > Other Accounts, you can connect your Typepad account with your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and more. Any accounts you add to your Typepad account will appear in your sidebar if you select the "Other Accounts" module at Design > Content. This module will share icons linking to your social accounts in your sidebar.
You can also automatically share blog updates in your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Connect your Facebook profile, page, and Twitter to a specific blog at Settings > Sharing. You have the option to set up automatic updates by default on your Sharing page or select which post to share on the Compose page:
If you share your post through the Compose page, you can enter your status update text and hashtags before you publish.
What are Hashtags and how to do I use them?
Hashtags are a word or phrase you use to describe your status update subject preceded with a pound sign (#). Hashtags work differently on different social sites. On Pinterest and Instagram, they are more descriptive (i.e.: #ChristmasDecor, #FallFashion) where on Twitter and Facebook they are more topical (i.e.: #TheOscars, #SuperBowlXLIX).
What about other popular sites like Pinterest, LinkedIn and Instagram?
If you have more accounts you want to share your blog updates on, IFTTT is a great tool to use where you can set up a recipe connecting your blog's RSS feed to more accounts like Pinterest. We have tutorials on how to cross-post your blog with Instagram and sharing your posts to your LinkedIn profile. Once your recipes are set up, you can publish a blog post and it can go out to several of your accounts at once without you having to sign in to any of them.
How can readers share my posts to their Social Media feeds?
Your Typepad blog has the option to display Social Media sharing buttons at the footer of each of your posts:
You can add share buttons for Twitter, Google +, Pinterest, and Facebook. The buttons can be added by going to Design > Content > Post Footer, and check off the box for the buttons you want to add. Once this is set up, when a reader clicks one of these buttons to share your post, a pop-up window will appear from that site prompting you to enter your update. The post title and permalink will already be included but you can add additional text and hashtags to your status update.
When is a good time to share on Social Media?
As soon as you post an update of course! But don't just share your blog update once on the day it's published. Programs like Hootsuite, Buffer, and MeetEdgar let you schedule status updates to multiple accounts so you can manage your accounts in one place. If you shared a blog update this morning, you can schedule a reminder tweet in the afternoon and later in the evening. When you use a third-party to schedule your status updates, you can schedule several updates at once saving you time in the long run.
It also does not hurt to get some fresh eyes on older blog posts. Bloggers like to share older posts on Facebook and Twitter, especially if the information is still relevant, don't let it just disappear in to the blogesphere and wait for it to appear in a search engine.
Where do you like to share your blog updates? Let us know in the comments!