If you’re starting a blog, you might be daunted. You might even be discouraged. It’s understandable. The way things are looking there is absolutely no way to look at the world of blogging and not feel like you have to be some marketing genius in order to make it world. You do, but you don’t. You see, people dramatically overestimate how much of a socual media presence they need in order to manage a blog or a website. It doesn’t take much effort at all to gain traction.
About half of all traffic comes from search
This means that in order to have a successful blog, you need to be visible to the search engines. Not social media. You get on social media so that you attract new eyeballs. You want random people to stumble upon your posts and link back to them. That’s what social media is for. If you’re really huge, it’s possible to get all of your traffic from socials. But usually, you’re going to want to
More traffic is going to established brands
This is because the search landscape is competitive and a lot of people have been writing for a living online for quite a long time. Cream is rising to the top when it comes to web traffic. The big brands are the ones getting the most. The little and middle guys all fight for scraps. This creates a winner take all environment, a concept that might be confusing given the title of this article. It’s not confusing once you understand the internet. Winner take all means you need to do your socials properly. The inequality will get worse over time, meaning your life will get easier.
Established brands are getting more direct website visitors
This is how people are making a bit of money online. They are getting to the point in the branding journey where people remember them, and are consistently reaping the rewards every month. This means people have their site bookmarked. If you’re a beginner and you know this, you should be prepared for a hard slog until you are able to get direct visitors. This means you’re going to need to reach a tipping point when it comes to content along with breadth of social media posting.
How much traffic should you expect to get from social? Only 5-25%.
It really all depends on how much Google likes your site. If Google hates you, you might spend your time social media marketing all day. But generally speaking, you shouldn’t need to get more than 25% of your traffic from social media. This means that if you have between 5,000-25,000 views per month from social media, you should have a healthy site. If you don’t, you should revisit your SEO and/or content.
Individual posts are unlikely to go viral
This is the downside to social media, and why everyone mistakenly believes that it’s a super tough gig. Individual posts just don’t get that mich traction online nowadays. This means that in order to make money with social media, you need to consistently link back to high value content. Enter your blog.
Social is about omnipresence
It’s best to write a bit less content and to be posting everywhere. If you post everywhere you dramatically increase your chances of being picked up by a web crawler or just a random person moving through the internet. It’s better to have a small following on multiple platforms, this way you’re always bringing in new people. Do the things that scale the least first, and expand outwards from there. That way it gets easier and easier. Be everywhere you can be online. I personally plan on posting on a minimum of 5 different social media platforms. The fun begins when I start short video.
Your articles a key, and they lead to your posting
This is the important thing to understand. You want to create more articles, so that you can post more to social media. You don’t want to spend too much time posting to any kind of social media except short video. The blog is the product. Social media posts themselves can’t be productized. Your article volume and quality matters more than your social media clout.
Short video distracts, but provides an opportunity
You can repost short videos wherever you want. This means that one video can end up making you money im several different ways. Reposting short videos that you make is a fantastic way to grow your social media presence and go from starting a website to having your own brand.
Don’t worry too much about your blog’s social media. Instead, spend the first little while creating content, and trying to find ways of getting some feedback. If you can comitt yourself to doing this, you can get ahead in the world of blogging, because you’ll be a great writer by the time you’re done. When you’ve got enough content to make a critical mass, you can blanket social.media without worrying. Don’t overthink it. As long as you build a website that has some value, you will get ahead.
Thanks for paying attention.
