If you’re a new blogger you’ll no doubt have spent many hours poring over the internet trying to crack the secret of how to grow your blog traffic.  After all, there’s no point starting a blog if you don’t want an audience – you may as well have just kept a personal journal hidden under your pillow.

Bloggers, Save Yourself from Social Media

Along the way you will have discovered a common thread running through much of the advice.  “Be everywhere on social media.”

Sounds ok doesn’t it?  You enjoy using social media and to be honest, it’s often a lot more interesting than slogging over a blog post or trying to figure out just what is going wrong with your widgets.

But then you give it a go and realise that social media has the power to suck your soul right outta your body.

You’re tired, crotchety and have absolutely no energy or time for the blog, yourself or your family.  Your children are scared to start eating their meal in case they accidentally ruin your Instagram image.

Does it have to be this way? 

The answer my friend is no, you can save yourself from social media and here’s how.

Find Your Readers

• Your first step to break those social media chains is to define your reader.  Get really detailed about who they are – name them, describe what they like and dislike, how they spend their day.

• Then go and find them.

• Which social media network is their second home?  Do they like chatting with friends in the Facebook hood or are they social butterflies flitting from one Tweet to another?  They might be visuals drooling over Pins or daydreaming on Instagram.

• Whoever your key reader is, get to know them and the social media network they gravitate to the most.

Create a campaign for the one account

• Dedicate your research to finding strategies for the one account you’ll be hanging out with your readers on.  Jenn’s kicked you off with the Getting Started with Your Own Twitter Marketing Campaign.  Go find more great tips.

• Draw up your own campaign.  Take the time to think about what you’d like to ultimately achieve with your blog.  Use those goals to direct your approach to building your social media plan. 

• Each community is unique and behaves in a different way – this in turn impacts how and if they will engage with your blog.  Use this knowledge to make sure your campaign is an effective one.

Concentrate on it and don’t worry about the others

• It’s time to put your plan in action.  Get cracking and start building your reputation in your single social media account of choice.  And, now this may be hard to hear, IGNORE THE OTHERS.

• It’s okay not to be on every. single. social. media. account. all. the. time.  Really it is.

• Don’t worry if you’ve only got a handful of followers in Twitter when you’re concentrating on building a Facebook community.

• Trying to be everywhere at the same time dilutes your effort and let’s be honest, is the recipe for social media induced insanity.  That’s a thing – or at least it should be.

Assess its impact on your blog

• When you’re working towards long term goals you need to get into the habit of assessing the value and outcome of each action you take.

• Ask yourself – How’s your campaign going?  Is it getting the results you wanted?  Don’t stop there, also assess the impact it’s had on your blog.  Make adjustments as you need to – nothing’s set in stone – just make sure you’ve given it enough time to marinate.

• Only after you’ve crowned yourself Queen of [insert social network here] can you consider whether it’s worth turning your attention to another account.

• The key to this approach is doing one thing and doing it awesomely.

Whew!

• It’s really satisfying when your efforts begin to pay off and with this approach you’ll benefit from that bloggy dopamine rush sooner rather than later.

• It also happens to be a quick and effective way to liberate yourself from the burden of social media.

• So don’t wait any longer – give yourself a break.  You (and your sanity) deserve it.

Bio

When not run off her feet chasing down four fleet-footed children, Lisa can be found taking refuge at The Blogzilla.  The Blogzilla is a site dedicated to helping mom and dad bloggers rock their corner of the blogsphere.  She loves visitors (except first thing in the morning when she doesn’t have time to hide the mess).