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Grow Your Blog Following with Instagram

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Instagram can be an amazing tool for bloggers. It’s an easy way to create images for your blog, and you can edit your pictures to make them slightly more professional-looking. Bonus – they’re the perfect size for re-posting on any social media platform!

Instagram can also help you gain more visitors to your blog. It’s a little trickier than other social media outlets becauseInstagram will not allow you to link directly to your website. However, with the right strategy, you can gain a following on Instagram, then convert those to followers of your blog!

Your Instagram Strategy

When it comes to Instagram, it’s important to remember that your brand as a blogger is you. You are trying to sell your personality, tastes, and aesthetic vision to your audience. On almost every other social media account, part of your branding is your words. Unfortunately, your sense of humor and voice won’t shine through as much through images.

So what type of picture should you post on Instagram? Well, why do your friends share their pictures? Why do you follow those friends? The answer is that people like to connect with other people. They like to know what’s going on in your life. Even bloggers should share some of that. Pictures of you, your family, your friends, and your pet are appropriate. If you are a niche blogger, definitely share your finished products. Beauty bloggers should share daily makeup choices, fashion bloggers their outfits, chefs their kitchen, etc.

Some Tips for Happy Instagram Marketing

  • Watermark or put your blog URL on all of your images so that people know where to find more of them.
  • Utilize hashtags. On other social media platforms, too many hashtags is a huge faux pas that gets annoying quick. On Instagram, you can use up to 30 hashtags. It would not be outlandish to use 10 on one image.
  • Connect your Instagram account to your other social media accounts. Through your Instagram settings, you can link up your accounts and post all Instagram pictures to Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, and Twitter. Facebook has apps that can show your Instagram feed on your business page. And don’t forget to add your Instagram account on your blog!
  • Use a picture of your face as your profile picture, not your logo. Instagram users are more likely to follow and interact with a real person than a brand they do not recognize.
  • Instagram is a social network, so be social! Always respond to comments. Browse relevant hashtags and “like” and comment on other user’s pictures.
  • You don’t always have to share pictures you’ve taken on Instagram (though don’t steal others’ pictures!). You can also share memes you’ve created or graphics you’ve made through a picture-editing program. Create a graphic image for each new blog post you’ve written and share it.
  • Beware of becoming annoying: Instagram is all about sharing snapshots of your life. Don’t post too much too often, and don’t post mundane pictures. Share pictures that represent your style, your mood, your brand, and more.

Do you have an Instagram account for your blog? We’d love to see it! You can follow us here.

10 Essential WordPress Plugins for Increasing Social Media Engagement

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Gaining online traffic to your blog is simple to do with social media. But after you’ve started your social media accounts and gathered an initial following, you may feel that your engagement is stalling. With these WordPress plugins for social media, you can design a painless process of sharing online while also encouraging your audience to share, like, +1, and follow you!  

  1. Google Analytics – Google Analytics can give you tons of valuable data about your blog and how your audience interacts with it. One important metric is the source of your traffic; this piece of information can help you determine which of your social media platforms is the most effective, and which is the least. If most of your traffic is coming from Pinterest, you know you’re doing something good there, and you might decide to spend most of your efforts driving Pinterest traffic.
  2. Simple Share Buttons – This WordPress app does exactly what the name claims: it adds social share buttons to all of your blog posts. It even gives your audience a share count, which can often influence them to share your content. Making it easy for your readers to share your content will increase your traffic from social media, as well as your engagement on social media.
  3. Sociable – Sociable adds social media buttons to your blog posts. This plugin adds a similar feature as Simple Share Buttons, but the images are social media icons rather than share buttons. Still, the same call-to-action is there, motivating your readers to share your content on their social media accounts.
  4. WP Pinner – Need a little help managing your Pinterest account? This plugin lets you schedule pins, track your Pinterest engagement, and automate pins of your WordPress posts from your admin panel. With this plugin, you can spend less time on Pinterest with the same amount of progress.
  5. Pinterest Image Pinner – Speaking of Pinterest engagement, this plugin will raise yours by adding a simple “Pin It” button to all of your blog post images. When it comes to Pinterest, readers are more inspired by your pictures than your text. You might lose the share if you leave your Pinterest CTA to the bottom of the post. Using this plugin allows your readers to pin your image the second they see it.
  6. Shareaholic – More social media buttons! These ones “float,” meaning that they follow the reader when he or she scrolls up and down on your webpage. Having the social share buttons immediately accessible will influence readers to share on a whim. Shareaholic also makes images shareable, gives the reader recommended and related content from your blog, and has social analytics from which you can glean valuable metrics.
  7. Tweet Old Post – This plugin will automatically tweet links to some of your older blog posts, reviving them and bringing in new traffic. Bringing readers in to some of your old posts with absolutely no effort on your part – what’s not to love?
  8. WordBooker – WordBooker streamlines the process of posting on Facebook. You can post content from your blog, status updates, and more into your Facebook page, any groups, or your own wall.
  9. The Google+ Plugin – Automate your G+ posts with this WordPress plugin. It also adds a +1 button to your blog and makes the process of adding you to a circle much easier for your readers.
  10. WP Instagram Widget – Use this plugin to display your latest Instagram pictures on your blog.  Attaching Instagram to your blog will direct your readers to follow you – giving them a taste of what you post can also be an added incentive.

What WordPress plugins would you recommend for increasing your blog’s social media engagement?

October Instagram Challenge

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Hey everyone! We’ve come up with a fun Instagram challenge you can do for the month of October. Here are some of the benefits of participating in an Instagram challenge:

  • It could provide inspiration for a blog post.
  • Joining in on a popular hashtag (#halloween has over 9 million pictures on it; #octoberchallenge has over 60,000; #octoberchallenge2013 has over 1,000) can expose your images to a broader audience.
  • It is recommended that bloggers use their own pictures in their posts – this Instagram challenge could grow your stock photo base.
  • It’s become crucial to have images dispersed throughout your blog post. Not only does it break up the text for the reader, but it allows your audience to better share posts on social media (Pinterest needs an image in order to share).

And lastly … it’s fun!

You can follow FreeGuestPost on Instagram! Make sure to tag @FreeGuestPost on your October Challenge pictures!