Sharing Blog Posts on Social Networks: Why & How

Last updated April 18th, 2024 at 10:04 am

How to Share Blog Posts to Your Social Networks Quickly & Easily

I usually like to lead with the “Why”, but I’m making an exception here.

The first two short videos below show you how to share your your blog posts on your social networks manually. (These two videos assume you’re not using a plugin that auto-shares posts to social networks.) All you need to install is a Social Share plugin. The one you’ll see in these videos is the free AddToAny Share Buttons plugin.

Check out these videos on Sharing Blog Posts

How to link to a blog post on a Facebook page:

How to link to a blog post on LinkedIn:

The “Why” of linking to blog posts on social networks:

Your Web Site as the Heart & Hub of Your Online Marketing

(TL;DR below)

The premise upon which my approach to online marketing is based is that your Web site — and especially the blog on your Web site — should be the heart and hub of your online marketing strategy.

Accordingly, in my view, social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others are and should be thought of as complementary components of that strategy. (I think the same is true for email marketing.)

When I share (preach) this approach with clients, some of them think I’m saying they should never post anything on social networks that isn’t already on their Web site or that they should never send out a broadcast email that doesn’t have the goal of sending the recipients to their website. Not so.

Where Social Networks Shine (and Where They Don’t)

Some things you might want to post to your Facebook Page (or Twitter timeline or LinkedIn profile, etc.) may not be especially “blog-worthy“. Maybe it’s a one-off photo of the company CEO emerging drenched from a fall into the dunk tank at a recent company picnic. Or maybe it’s an action shot of her dunking on the president on the basketball court at that same picnic.

A major and important goal of social media (and while I’m focusing a lot on Facebook here, the principles apply to most social networks) is engaging with people. The nature of social networks like Facebook make that engagement easy and fun — and rewarding, when you get likes, comments, and shares.

But if you’re only or primarily posting on social networks, you run the risk of engaging only with those who already know and like you — and happen to see your posts on their timelines. (We all know that Facebook decides who sees what and when.) You are, in essence, preaching to the choir. (Not that that’s a bad thing.)

Blog-Worthiness vs. Facebook-Worthiness

So what exactly is blog-worthy? And how does that compare to that which is Facebook-worthy (social-network-worthy)?

It is extremely easy to post something to a Facebook Page. The post doesn’t have to be extremely long or meaty. Not a lot of planning or spell-checking is involved. Publishing a blog article, on the other hand, can take a fair amount of time and effort. And blog articles tend to be on the meatier side.

I’m not telling you not to post to Facebook (or other social networks). What I’m recommending is this:

Example:

Let’s use the example of the company picnic where that CEO got drenched in the dunk tank and dunked on the president on the basketball court. If you have a series of photos of the picnic, it might make sense to display those photos an attractive gallery inside a blog post on your Web site — surrounded by a little bit of keyword-rich text content that describes that company picnic. Then, with just a few clicks of a mouse, you can share that blog post on social media. (The first two videos on this page demonstrate how easy this can be.)

Why Post on Your Blog First?

The beauty of posting to your blog first and then sharing blog posts on social media — even though it will admittedly take more time and care to create a proper blog post — is that you would be killing two or more birds (Web site, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, etc.) with one stone. Furthermore, as I try to explain in the third video in this blog article, you enjoy at least two other important potential advantages:

1. Your Web site’s search engine mojo will be enhanced by virtue of your having created multiple links from social networks to your Web site. (And don’t forget that when your friends, fans, followers and connections on social networks re-share those posts, the links to your Web site can increase geometrically.)
2. You will be sending people to the one place (your Web site) where, presumably, lots of information in lots of detail about virtually every aspect of your enterprise can be found by navigating around a well-organized Web Place.

I Get It.

If you have responsibility for online marketing for your enterprise, you might be tempted to focus most of your attention and energy on social media destinations like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so on.

I get it. Sharing on social networks is a good thing. It’s fun. It encourages engagement and interaction and can be very reinforcing (gotta love those likes and shares and comments). And it’s easy. And you probably spend a fair amount of time on those social networks already.

If you view your social networks as the center of your online marketing universe, I’m inviting you to consider shifting your paradigm. I’m suggesting you consider the argument that it’s your Web site that should be the heart and hub of your online marketing strategy.

I welcome your comments.