Students: Integrating Social Media Into Your Blog

BusinessMarketing & Advertising

  • Author Ken Sundheim
  • Published August 3, 2010
  • Word count 759

Having a blog is technically doing a form of social media. After all, you are attempting to executive the basic concept of social media which is bringing people together via using your s.m. platform which is a blog whether it be a basic WordPress or other. When attempting to drive visitors, don't think about your needs, think about the topics which your target audience would want to read about. You must first decipher as to what are the topics other college students want to read about. Interesting content is the entire foundation of a successful social media campaign.

For instance, students don't want to read about your trip to France. However, they do want to read about various professors at your school, the best bars, the cheapest places to eat, the reputation of fraternity and sororities, sports at the college and other things which are on students' minds. So, how do you get the word out now that you've switched around your social media strategy and have cutting edge content? The answer is simple; you outsource it. Think about the various things that students want and need. The answer is money, food, designer clothing, books, software, gas, etc.

Therefore, since you are going after many different facets of the student body, reach out to somebody popular in each group and ask them to do a guest blog. Formulate some way to compensate them ($25 or so in total) based on the number of comments or visitors which come to the site. How do you find them without physically walking around campus or going to random bars and handing out pamphlets? Begin searching for other popular blogs with the same topic. Use the search engines. Bring the writers over.

Doing this is not always as easy as it sounds as making popular friends online is quite hard. You must be polite and only go in for the sale if you are 75% sure that they will bite. Don't go offering them money, gift certificates or whatever you want to offer right away. Ask them a broad question or two such as,

"Do you know what I would have to pay a guest blogger to make my site more interesting? Are you ever a guest blogger?"

If you can bring them over to your site, it is very important that you have them put a link (preferably HTML - look it up, it's not too hard of a concept and you will need the knowledge) to your site on their blog. Since you are paying them, have the link be visible and have it describe what your blog is about. This way, you can scrape some visitors which otherwise would not have known about your site. Think of it as residual income.

Constantly keep track regarding increase of visitors to your site. There are two main ways to do this. The first is to install a function called Google Analytics. It is very easy and is a great way to track the number of people who come to your blog. Therefore, you can see which guest bloggers are bringing you an audience and which are not doing their job. Also, there is a ranking referred to as an Alexarating. It is a very easy concept to pick up and getting your ranking down (the lower the better) is a really fun game.

Then, constantly moderate your blog and make sure that you become an expert on each topic which is covered. Try to keep the topics separate. If a blog post about campus bars and professor ratings is on the same page, it is not going to be as effective as if they were separate.

Become the moderator of your blog. A few times a day you are going to have to check in and approve comments while filtering the spam. I know many well known website owners and they are always in front of the computer. Don't use this as a basis, but I email back and forth with a really nice guy in India who owns 300 websites and he knows how to manage them. I don't recommend that you do this, however you get the point. There is too much competition out there for you not to keep up with your blog at least 5x a day.

When moderating comments on your blog, make sure that the writing is not slandering any particular individual. This could get you in a lot of hot water. If you are unsure as to whether to put a post up, don't put it up.

Ken Sundheim runs KAS Placement, an executive recruiting firm:

Atlanta Sales Recruiters and Marketing Staffing

Sales Staffing and Sales Recruitment Agencies

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