Explode Your Social following Numbers With This 6-Day Success schedule
We write a lot about how to grow a successful blog so that you can earn money online and pay for unlimited travel and adventure, but we have rarely covered social media.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest & YouTube are just as essential as your blog traffic and pretty much every successful blogger will also have a large audience on social media.
Just how important can social media be? We’ve been paid upwards of $500 for a post on social media, we’ve made thousands of dollars from Instagram Takeovers and Twitter Chats and we’ve even been paid by companies and given all-expenses paid trips just to cover an event or destination on social media.
There’s no doubt about it, it’s incredibly essential to have a good social media following if you want to be a successful blogger and it can actually end up being a very profitable company to get into.
In this article, I’m not just going to list all of the essential methods we’ve used to grow our social following to over 120,000 people, but I’m also going to break down exactly what you can do, day in and day out, in purchase to explode your social media audience.
First I’ll list all of the social media basics and discuss what each essential task is that you will have in the schedule, and then I’ll share with you the 6-Day Success schedule that will show you exactly what to do Monday through Saturday.
Social Media Basics
Just as with the blog basics, here is a breakdown of the most essential things you ought to be doing on social media. social media basics are relatively easy once you get the hang of them, but they do take time. Every single day you ought to be doing all of the following.
Create Pinterest Images
Head over to Canva.com, join for totally free and learn how to create Pinterest images there. These images are long and narrow (Canva has a design template with exact dimensions) and have been proven to be the most clicked.
Design your Pinterest image by adding text and some trendy elements. then download it as a JPEG file. now go in to edit the post that you want to add the Pinterest image to in WordPress, scroll to the bottom of the post in the edit screen and submit the image to the bottom. It’s always good to add some big font (h2) that says something like “Like This Post? Pin it!” just above the image.
Now copy the URL of the newly uploaded Pinterest image and Click Here to create a fancy Pinterest button.
From the button builder screen, select the following:
Button type = one image
Appearance = Large/Rectangular/Red/English
Show Pin count = above the button
Insert URL of the blog post where it says “URL”, then paste the image URL that you copied earlier in the box next to “Image URL” and change the description to something similar to the post name, but with lots of extra keywords that you think people may search for to find your post.
Then click “Build it”. now copy all of the code that appears and go back to your WordPress post edit screen, click the “Text” tab to show the HTML for your post and then scroll all the way down to the bottom and paste that code there. now click the “Visual” tab, scroll down again and make sure everything looks good. You ought to end up with something like this:
Pinterest is likely to be one of your top traffic earners down the road, so spend a lot of time on it. Create a Pinterest image for every short article you do and submit it to the bottom of your posts and you’ll find that your readers will be much more likely to pin your articles and help them go viral.
Apply For Pinterest group Boards
In purchase to have your Pins seen and to grow your Pinterest traffic, you’ll have to get your account accepted in group boards. search around Pinterest for popular group boards in your niche and apply for them. once you have joined a few, you can start posting in them.
To apply for group boards, head over to Pin Groupie. This site categorized thousands of group boards on Pinterest and you can even search by which ones have the most followers, repins etc. once there, change the category to “travel” and then change the purchase to “Most Repins”.
Now you’ll see a huge list of group boards on Pinterest. You can narrow the results even more by adding keywords into the “Title” or “Description” boxes. once you find a board you like, click on it’s title in the list to open it in Pinterest. First follow the board, then click on the first avatar image to the best of the board title.
Open the developer of theboard’s profile and follow them. then click the little paper airplane at the top left of your screen, search for their name, click it and then send them a message on Pinterest. discuss to them why you would be a great asset to the board and request to be added.
Pin and Repin in group Boards
Now that you have access to some group boards, you ought to pin (and repin) your articles inside of the boards.
Social Sharing
This is pretty self explanitory as well, but there are different types of social shares like live videos, photos posts, one liners and short article shares. I’m going to break them all down separately so that you understand what each one implies when you see it in the schedule.
FB text Share: This is a pretty easy share that doesn’t take much time, but it can be very effective. simply ask your audience a question or have them fill in the blanks (ie: “What’s your preferred beach in the world” or “My preferred meal abroad is _____.” or “Where in the world are you from?”)
FB image Share: post up on of your preferred photos with a brief 2 or 3 paragraph description below. always make sure to use suitable hash labels and mention others who are likely to share the post.
FB live Video: probably the most essential Facebook Share you can do (and one that we under-utilize) a Facebook live video is exactly what it sounds like. You type a description, add a location and go live to your followers. It can be unusual at first, but make sure you engage with your audience while they comment on your live video. Facebook will give you the best reach for these types of shares.
FB Video: This is simply a video that you create or edit yourself and then submit to Facebook afterwards, much like you would on YouTube.
TW text Tweet: just like with Facebook, this easy text tweet can be a question, a fill in the blank or just an interesting fact you have to share.
TW image Tweet: These are just as essential as they are on Facebook. Share your best photo and discuss it in 140 characters or less. always include hashtags.
TW live Video: Twitter hasn’t grown their live video interface like Facebook has, but it’s still worth going live on Twitter every once in a while.
INSTA image Share: Instagram was built on photos so it’s no surprise that sharing images on the platform is important. choose a theme and style that you will use on your Instagram account and stick with it. write a long description for the image, publish it and then post the first comment that includes as numerous relevant hashtags as you can think of.
INSTA live Video: Although video is new to Instagram, it’s exploded quickly. You can post live videos to Instagram to increase engagement.
INSTA Story: Instagram fully knocked off SnapChat and is now pretty much running the web when it concerns the “Story” platform. post brief, 10 second clips 5 – 15 times throughought your day and your followers will love you for it.
INSTA VIDEO: just like on Facebook & Twitter, edit a good 1 minute long video and submit it to Instagram. This will show up in your feed.
YouTube
YouTube Video: edit a great travel video, create a beautiful thumbnail for it, title it something that makes people want to click it and submit it to YouTube. I personally use final cut pro to edit videos and I love it. A great tool to manage and optimize your YouTube videos & channel is TubeBuddy.
YouTube Live: let your subscribers know that you’ll be having a YouTube live session and have a conversation with them while publishing the live feed for others to view later.
At first, it’ll seem like a lot, but when you’re first starting out you really need your followers to get to know you, so live videos, uploaded videos and daily shares (with or without photos) are all important.
Schedule Shares
Signup for HootSuite and start seeing your social shares in a calendar. You ought to always have shares going out, even when you’re too busy to remember! each time you see “Schedule Shares” in the 6 Day Social Success Calendar, you ought to schedule at least 6 shares. typically 5 Tweets and 1 Facebook share is a good place to start.
Reply To Comments
Just like on your blog, it’s essential that you keep communication with your followers on social media.
Follow / Unfollow
This is a controversial strategy for growing your social media following, but for new bloggers who don’t have money to pay for advertising, it’s the absolute best way. essentially what you do is head to your Instagram & Twitter account, find people in your niche and follow them. I’m not going to get too into it here, but I think Neil Patel puts it best:
“Here’s the rationale. If these 69.6k people chose to follow @successfield, then they might choose to follow me, too. I’m in the same niche, same industry, and am offering just as much value (if not more!).”
Neil has an amazing blog & social media following so he should be doing something right. He discusses how to correctly utilize follow / Unfollow on Instagram in this post, and this one discusses how to do it on Twitter effectively.
By when you follow people on Twitter or Instagram, they’ll get a notification to follow you back. If they like your account, you’ll likely get a follow back.
This is a great way to blow up your Instagram and Twitter by thousands of people each week, but their are limitations. Don’t follow much more than 50 people per hour on either platform and when you’re starting out, you ought to limit yourself to 300 follows per day, and make sure you go back a week later and unfollow any people who didn’t follow you back so that your follow to unfollow ration isn’t too high.
Never follow spammy looking accounts and only follow those who speak the language of your account. Some people use automation to follow / unfollow but this is a very spammy way of doing it. You ought to personally be following people who are in your niche so that you can choose them yourself, based on their profile photo, bio and interests. never follow eggs, XXX profiles or certainly abusive looking accounts.
Expert Tips:
For Twitter: use ManageFlitter for totally free to unfollow people who aren’t following you back and keep track of your account. ManageFlitter also helps you weed out potential spam followers and keep a healthy Twitter account.
For Instagram: Use the Followers App to similarly unfollow people on Instagram and keep your account healthy.
Research
Just like when you’re trying to increase your blog’s traffic, when you’re trying to grow your social following it’s essential that you do a lot of research. check which hashtags are doing well, go on BuzzSumo and see what topics are trending in your niche and learn different ways to grow and engage your audience.
Quick Summary
There are quite a few tasks that I’ve noted above and that will show up in the 6 Day Social Success Calendar, so I’ve noted them below so for your memory:
Create Pinterest Images
Apply For Pinterest group Boards
Pin & Re-pin in group Boards
Add Pin into Re-pin Group
Social Shares:
Facebook text Share (FB text Share)
Facebook image Share (FB image Share)
Facebook live video (FB live Video)
Facebook video submit (FB Video)
Twitter text Tweet (TW text Tweet)
Twitter image Tweet (TW image Tweet)
Twitter live video (TW live Video)
Instagram image Share (INSTA image Share)
Instagram live video (INSTA live Video)
Instagram story (INSTA Story)
Instagram video submit (INSTA Video)
YouTube video submit (YouTube Video)
YouTube live (YouTube Live)
Schedule Shares
Comment On Social
Comment On YouTube
Reply To Social Comments
Follow / Unfollow
Research
6-Day Social Success Schedule
Day 1 – Monday
Follow / Unfollow
Comment On Social
Reply To Comments
Facebook image Share
Instagram image Share
Twitter image Share
YouTube Video
Schedule Shares
Day 2 – Tuesday
Follow / Unfollow
Create Pinterest Images
Apply For Pinterest group Boards
Pin & Repin in group Boards
Reply To Comments
Facebook live Video
Instagram Story
Twitter text Tweet
Comment around On YouTube
Research
Day 3 – Wednesday
Follow / Unfollow
Comment around Social
Comme
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