20 tips to leverage social media #atozchallenge

I have the privilege of guest-posting on the A to Z Challenge blog today. I’d love to hear your feedback on this post where I offer 20 tips to leverage social media for the A to Z Challenge and beyond! Here’s the post:

“Do You leverage #Socialmedia for #blogging? 20 #atozchallenge Tips”

A blog hop is all about interaction, making friends and getting to know new bloggers. The #AtoZChallenge is a ready-made opportunity to connect, interact, and take your blogging motivation to new highs.

So you’ve signed up for the A to Z Challenge (do it now if you haven’t), and perhaps even the  A to Z Theme Reveal Blogfest where you join a huge group of AtoZers to post your theme reveal post. You’re also busy outlining your posts and scheduling them for April, so you can be free to party.

Yes, it is a month-long blogging party that will change your life forever!

So, besides visiting other bloggers, how can you amplify your blogging presence?

Use social media!

Social media is a great way to attract new readers and engage with your existing ones. As bloggers we cannot afford to ignore social media.

If you’re still wondering why you should use social media…it helps you

• increase your reach on social media
• build a loyal fan base
• invite collaboration opportunities
• get a book written (yes!)
• create community
• make new friends
• get gigs 

and so much more!

How to get started?

1. Clean up your sidebars
2. Place your “follow/subscribe” buttons prominently so your visitors can find them easily and follow or subscribe to your awesome blog updates.
3. Display Social Media Connect buttons for the networks you frequent. The most common are: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and of course, email. You can get combinations of the set. Don’t forget to customize the buttons with your own profile links.
4. Add Social Mediasharing buttons – so your visitors can share your posts on their social network of choice.
5. Have a Facebookfan page? Add the widget in your sidebar so you can build your audience right from your blog. All your visitor has to do is hit “Like.”
6. Create readymade tweets so your readers can copy and tweet.
7. Use a dashboard like Hootsuite to manage and schedule your social media posts. Install the Hootsuite “hootlet” for your browser to tweet/schedule a tweet for any page you are on. If you follow the blogger, don’t forget to tag them when you tweet. The Hootsuite dashboard lets you see your tweet stream, sent tweets, mentions and scheduled posts.
8. If you use Feedburner, use the “socialize” feature to autoshare your own post on social media as soon you publish.
9. Use the #atozchallenge tag across all media to make them easily discoverable.
10. Big on images? Add a Pin it button so your readers can share your gorgeous images on Pinterest.
11. Use LinkedIn? Import your RSS feed to your LinkedIn profile using the blog link application on LinkedIn to show off your posts on your profile.
12. Go to your Twitter settings – and set it up to share automatically to your Facebook profile.
13. Autopublish your Facebook Fan page posts to Twitter.
14. Spend some time every day acknowledging shares and engaging in social media. Thank people publicly, give them a shoutout!
15. And while you are at it, give your “About Me” page the once-over! Now is a good time to tweak that, too!
16. Don’t forget to TELL your readers to share your posts!
17. The A to Z Challenge is not just about you. Consider auto-tweeting your favorite blogs’ posts and you’ll have a bunch of RTers for your own posts soon!
18. If you have a twitter account, consider joining Triberr.com. This will ensure a lot of bloggers RT your posts.
19. Use Roundteam.co to automatically RT tweets on the #atozchallenge tag, or from bloggers you like.
20. Finally, check that all your links work.

To summarize, sidebar must-haves:

• Subscribe / Follow button
• Social media connect buttons
• G+ button for your blog (different from the add to circles)
• Facebook Fan page Like Widget
• AtoZChallenge badge

Go forth and connect! Questions, problems? Ask away in the comments and Vidya will do her best to solve them for you!

. . .

With the April A to Z Challenge coming up, there’s excitement among the participants and those wondering whether they should give in to the temptation of signing up and joining this mega blogging party.

Those of us that waited for the sign up link to go up and pounced on it are enjoying the madness of planning, deciding themes and resolving to write our posts and schedule them as much as possible, so that April is a month for connecting and interacting instead of fretting over what to write. This is right in sync with my favorite quote:

Fail to plan and you plan to fail!

So as part of #TeamDamyanti, I am co-hosting a Theme reveal blog fest – a hop within the A to Z Challenge hop where we’ve invited A to Z participants to sign up for the linky (sign up now) and start visiting people even as we wait to publish our post on March 21, revealing our theme for April. Makes sense to build our community before the challenge so that your blog is abuzz even before April, right?

And yes, having a theme is a very sensible idea! I am participating with two blogs this time – and will be having a theme for my health blog Your Medical Guide – simply because it is easier. For this blog…hey, wait. I’ll reveal all on March 21, so stay tuned!

Even as we prepare for the A to Z Challenge, we all know that there is far more to it than writing the posts. These days, we have powerful tools to connect and interact and one of them is social media. The good news is, once you create your profile on the most popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, there are a number of ways to amplify your presence. You can be omnipresent by simply leveraging a few strategies that are practically a one-time setup, freeing up precious time to actually interact and engage with other bloggers. And absolutely no need to stress yourself out!

A to Z Challenge – All about connecting

In my post at the A to Z Challenge blog, I have shared what I’ve learned, and use, to manage social media. You know, social media need not stress you out! Focus on the fun.

If you are an A to Z participant, please sign up for the Theme Reveal bloghop here.

Above all, no matter what you do……

Have fun!