Are you using social media for your blog? Social media is one of the fastest and easiest ways to grow your blog following – but only if it’s done right. This session will include focusing on your target market and finding it if you’re unsure of it, understanding which social media platform(s) is right for your blog, creating and curating content for your social media, and more. Learn how to use a content calendar to stay organized, tactics for growing a genuine and engaged following, how to properly showcase brand sponsorships on social media, and more.

1. Developing A Social Media
Strategy for Bloggers
Ashley Mason, Social Media Consultant at Dash of Social

2. About Ashley Mason
● Blogger of 5 years
● Social media consultant
at Dash of Social

3. Topics Covered
● Creating your social media
strategy
● Planning your content across
platforms
● Evaluating the results of your
strategy
● BONUS: Making money
through social media

4. Creating
Your
Strategy
● Target market
● Brand
● Inspiration
● Social media goals
● Platform(s)
● Content strategy
● Growth strategy

5. Target Market
● Your target market should be the
first thing you think about when
creating your social media strategy.
● Ask yourself the following questions:
○ Who is my target market?
○ What issues do they have?
○ What do I solve for them?
○ What sets me apart from other
bloggers in my niche?

6. Brand
● Your brand goes hand-in-hand with your
target market.
● Stay consistent with your brand to attract
your ideal audience; going off-brand will
attract the readers who DON’T align with
you.
● Consider these:
○ What values does my brand have?
○ What tones do I want to use?
○ How would I describe my brand?

7. Inspiration
● Get inspired by other brands that are
similar to your niche, but do NOT copy the
exact strategy that they have.
● Think about these questions:
○ What blogs that are similar to mine
have an awesome strategy?
○ What do I like about their strategy?
○ Which techniques could work for
me, too?

8. Social Media Goals
● Setting goals for your social media gives
your presence a purpose and holds you
accountable to growing your blog.
● Which goal(s) do you hope to reach?
○ Growing your email list
○ Encouraging community
○ Making money
○ Driving traffic to your blog
○ Something else?

9. Platforms
● Now that you know your target market,
your brand, and your goals, you can figure
out the platform(s) you’ll be on. Hint: You
don’t have to be on EVERY platform!
● Ask yourself the following questions:
○ Where on social media do my
readers hang out?
○ Which social media platform(s) can
help me reach my goal?
○ What platform do I feel most
comfortable with?

10. Content Strategy
● Start to think about the type of content
that you’re going to share. Consider
following the ⅓ social media rule, which is
a similar concept to the 80/20 rule.
● The ⅓ rule states that:
○ ⅓ of your content should be
promotion
○ ⅓ should be content sharing
○ ⅓ should be engagement
● Hint: You CAN repurpose content that
performs well!

11. Growth Strategy
● You’ve targeted your audience, solidified
your brand, and created your content - it’s
time to grow.
● Try these growth strategies:
○ Ads
○ Curated hashtags
○ Engaging
○ Facebook Live - Live videos can
drive 10 times more comments
because of the real time connection
between users (Facebook)

12. Planning
Your
Content
● Content calendar
● Scheduling tools

13. Content Calendar
● Use a content calendar to plan your
posts for each day, week, and even
month.
● Organizing your content will allow you
to:
○ Make any changes before
scheduling
○ Guarantee your content is unique
○ Collaborate with team members
easily and effectively

14. Scheduling Tools
● Whenever you can automate your
business, you should - automating
social media is key.
● My favorite scheduling tools are:
○ Facebook’s native scheduler
○ Hootsuite, Buffer, or Viraltag
for Twitter
○ Planoly or Later for Instagram
○ Boardbooster for Pinterest

15. Evaluating
Your
Strategy
● Organizing your data
● Evaluating the analytics
● Tweaking your strategy

16. Organizing Your Data
● At the end of each month, create a
spreadsheet for each platform to organize
the data from all posts.
● You should be looking at these for each
platform:
○ Twitter: follows, retweets, favorites,
replies
○ Facebook: page likes, post likes,
reach, engagement, comments,
shares
○ Instagram: follows, likes, comments,
reach, engagement, saves

17. Evaluating the Analysis
● You have all this data - now it’s time
to dissect it and figure out what it
means.
● Ask yourself the following questions:
○ What content performed well?
○ What content didn’t perform
well?
○ Which growth strategy brought
me the most engaged followers?

18. Tweaking Your Strategy
● Take the results that you found and
apply them to your strategy - because
your strategy WILL need to be
updated to work with constant
algorithm changes.
● Consider these:
○ Which idea(s) should I get rid of?
○ Which idea(s) should I repeat?
○ What are some new things I can
try?

19. BONUS: Making
Money on Social
Media
● Ideas for making money
● Properly disclosing
sponsorships
● Stats brands look for

20. Ideas for Making Money
● You now have an established social
media presence - you might as well
use it to make money!
● Choose between these two options
and w0rk them into your strategy
under the promotions category:
○ Affiliate links
○ Sponsored content

21. Properly Disclosing
Sponsorships ● In order to avoid potential lawsuits or
fines, you must make it aware to your
audience that you’re receiving some
form of compensation.
● Ask yourself these questions:
○ Is it clear that I’m being
sponsored?
○ Is the sponsored hashtag visible
or hidden?
○ Is there a disclaimer in the
corresponding blog post?

22. Stats Brands Looks For
● Brands look past the number of
followers you have and focus more
on other social media stats. You do
NOT need a certain amount of
followers to work with brands.
● Follow these analytics:
○ Reach
○ Engagement
○ Impressions

23. QUESTIONS?

24. THANK YOU!
Ashley Mason, Social Media Consultant at Dash of Social