The success of a blog can be judged on different aspects, but engagement will  be a dominant factor in achieving the desired outcome. Using social media  marketing to promote your blog can be highly effective, and your ‘followers’ or ‘likes’ should be considered as important metrics.

However, ensuring that you truly engage with these people, across all  platforms, is equally important and often overlooked.

Seth Godin is widely viewed as an arbiter on marketing issues, he has  repeatedly referenced Kevin Kelly’s ‘1000 True Fans’ article. Kelly’s principal message is that  a ‘true’ fan is of greater value than a lesser fan, and that engagement helps  nurture ‘true’ fans. He states that:

‘The genius of the True Fan model is that the  fans are able to move an artist away from the edges of the long tail to a degree  larger than their numbers indicate.’

His article focuses on upcoming artists aiming to sustain a living, but the  methods can be applied to the development of any blog. If you’re dealing with  larger numbers, or are representing a corporation, then you should still pay  heed to these core values with the same sincerity.

1. Unique & varied social media content

Using Facebook or twitter to post links to your own articles will help drive  traffic towards your site, no doubt. However, if this is your only social media  activity then you have to question how original and engaging the page is.  Readers may initially ‘like’ or ‘follow’ you, but if your page is essentially a  glorified RSS feed then you may drive these same people away at a later date.  Also remember that engagement leads to more followers/likes.

A good example of a successful commercial Facebook page is Oreo; unique video, images, and campaigns  solely for their Facebook page present the user with a fresh experience. The  user’s engagement and sharing of the content, will in turn increase the traffic  to both your Facebook page and your blog. If you are representing a brand, don’t  be afraid to show intelligence – ‘dumbing down’ to your audience can be  portrayed as a ‘dumbing down’ of your brand. This is where Oreo excels; it  doesn’t offer generic competitions, instead choosing to post relevant and  humorous content.

If you run a personal blog you may not have the resources for a campaign on  this scale, but at least adopt the principles and ensure you have some unique  content.

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/04/02/the-social-media-marketing-secrets-of-smart-savvy-bloggers/#YJuH5J5gkgCsdYrK.99