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How To Establish A Consistent Social Media Presence

May 27, 2015 • social media • Comments

Maintaining consistency within your blog is one of the best ways to gain loyal followers and establish a visual identity for readers to remember you by. Post graphic templates, writing style, and a solid brand are the main ways to create that identity on your blog, but what about your other outlets? Keeping your online presence consistent will really solidify your audience’s perception of you, which is all they have considering they probably haven’t met you in person! While your blog is where you show off your talents and give your readers wonderful content, social media is where they get to know you on a more personal level, and that’s where your next focus should be when establishing your online presence.

There are several actions you can take to start streamlining your social media profiles. I’ll be going through some main steps, and beyond that, it’s your job to keep it up!

Make all of your profile images the same

You know that gorgeous image you have at the top of your sidebar? Upload that photo as your profile picture on all of your social media profiles. Your audience will start connecting that photo with your blog and overall presence, which is just the start of this process! Most social media platforms use a square profile picture, so having a high quality square image in your files will make things super simple.

Create a consistent cover photo

Most social media pages have a space for a cover photo, and using the same photo across them is just as important as using the same profile picture. Unfortunately, each platform has a different size, so you’ll have to do a bit of editing here. I’d suggest designing the biggest one first, and then cropping from there! Here are the sizes for the most used social media platforms:

Facebook: 851 x 315 px
Twitter: 1500 x 500 px
Google Plus: 1088 x 608 px

Use your own voice

By now you’ve probably developed a consistent writing style within your blog, so this part should be easy. When posting on social media, try to use that same voice, because your audience will recognize it! For example, I’m a fairly sarcastic person, and I try to be as relatable as I can in my posts. I maintain that style on social media by posting sarcastic tweets and random thoughts throughout my day, which my followers seem to connect well with!

Create a short bio to use across the board

A lot of bloggers have a short snippet about themselves on their blog, and it’s the perfect bio to use on social media. Using the same bio on every platform establishes who you are, and how you want your audience to see you, so choose your words wisely and try to get as much information as you can into just a sentence or two. Character limits are the barrier here, so if you have to change things up in order to meet that requirement, take out any fluff words and narrow down what your audience really needs to know about you.

One last tip: Try to avoid posting the same thing to each profile (I know, that sounds like the opposite of consistency!). A lot of your followers probably follow you on multiple platforms, so it can seem spammy when your word for word exact post shows up on several of them. Instead, try changing up the wording to suit the platform you’re using, and scatter the posts throughout the day to catch readers who may not have been online earlier!

How do you use social media to establish your online presence? Have you discovered any tricks to retaining followers on those profiles? I’d love to know!

How To Use Group Pinterest Boards To Gain Blog Exposure

May 7, 2015 • blog growth, social media • Comments

Pinterest has done great things for my blog since its start back in March 2014. It’s consistently held the top referral spot for my blog (over 75% of my views are referred through Pinterest!), and it’s where I discover new blogs to follow. Of all it’s features, group Pinterest boards have to be my favorite simply because of all the opportunity they offer!

Group Pinterest boards are just like any other Pinterest board, but they’re pinned to by more than one person rather than just the creator. This is great for several reasons:

More contributors means more content, and more content means more activity.
A large group of contributors can also bring in a bigger following.
By having a diverse group of pinners, your pins will be exposed to people who don’t follow you yet.
Group boards often have rules that require members to repin other pins within the board after pinning something of their own, so you’re guaranteed some repins!
If your blog graphics have a consistent style to them, the members/followers of the group board will start to differentiate between your pins and the pins of other members.

So, are you hooked yet? 😉 Here are my strategies for making the most of group boards:

Finding A Group Pinterest Board

Of course, the first step to using a group board is finding one! There are several websites that aggregate group boards in one giant list, like PinGroupie, although these types of sites can leave you searching for hours to find a good board. You can also search for a specific topic in the Pinterest search bar, and then filter your results for “boards”. If none of these options lead you to a board you like, try checking out the boards of people you follow. I run my own group board, Blogging Is Our Jam, where members can share their posts about all things blogging! (If you’re interested in joining, head here)

There are a few things you should consider when choosing a group board to ensure you’ll benefit from it:

Are the members active? Is there new content being pinned every day?
How many repins does each pin on the board have on average? Are there a lot of pins without any repins? This could be a bad sign!
Do you content that would interest the average follower of this board?
Are the pins on this board of good quality? Would you repin these pins?
Is there a lot of spam in this board? Do members pin things unrelated to the board’s topic?
How strict are the rules for this board? Is there a daily pin limit?

Once you’ve found the board for you, just follow the instructions provided by the creator in the board description. No instructions? Try commenting on one of the pins asking to become a member—this doesn’t always work, but it may be your only option!

Start Pinning!

After creating some great graphics for your posts, slowly start pinning them to the new board. I say slowly because you don’t want to seem spammy, and some boards may have a limit as to how many pins you can add a day. I try to max out my pins to about 5 a day, with a couple of hours between each. This can also help you figure out when the best time to pin is!

Take note of your pins’ success

This is when the real strategizing comes in. Every time you add a pin, make note of it somewhere, and check back every once in a while to see how that pin is doing. What was the pin about? How many repins did it get? Any comments? This can help you learn a few things about your pins:

If you’ve pinned from a specific post multiple times, but with different graphics, you can see which graphic caught the most attention from its audience.
If your graphics are fairly consistent, a difference in the number of repins between different posts could show that your audience is interested in one topic more than the other. For example, if your pins that link to posts about blog growth are doing great, but the ones about social media aren’t, this could be a sign that your audience is more interested in learning about blog growth than social media. Use this kind of data to come up with new post topics that you know your audience will enjoy!
Similarly to testing graphic styles, you can also test out post titles by creating graphics for the same post, but with different text, to see which ones grab the most attention. For example, the graphic I created for this post says, “How To Use Group Pinterest Boards To Gain Blog Exposure,” which is also the title of this post. However, I could’ve shortened it to something like, “Using Group Pinterest Boards To Grow Your Blog”. The takeaway here is that the text in your pin doesn’t have to match the title of your post—use whatever attracts more traffic!

Repin Other Members’ Content

More of a courtesy than anything else, repinning content from other members will ensure you keep a good reputation among the board members and don’t make any enemies. Don’t be that person who just takes advantage of the board—the only way group boards work is if everyone contributes by both pinning and repinning. Besides, there’s probably some great content to repin!

Are you a member of any group boards? I’d love recommendations!

How To Set Up Rich Pins For Blogger And WordPress

May 4, 2015 • blogging, social media • Comments

Rich Pins are popping up everywhere on Pinterest, and it’s slowly becoming the norm for bloggers to have them. They’re pins that include extra information—your website name and favicon—so pinners know exactly who they’re repinning from (aka you!). Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably seen them, and you can check out an example on my blog’s board. I got approved about a month ago and since then, my profile views and average monthly viewers have more than doubled! Setting up Rich Pins is extremely beneficial to your blog, and it only takes a few minutes to do!

Setting Up Rich Pins On Blogger

1. Adding Rich Pins on Blogger requires a bit of code, but nothing too complicated! First, go to Settings > Search Preferences > Meta Tags and edit the Description section to be “enabled”. Here you can add a short description of your blog, and when you go to edit your posts, you’ll see a new box in the options sidebar allowing you to enter a search description. This is a great place to write a brief summary of your post, although you can leave it blank and the first few lines of your content will show up instead.

2. Now go to Template > Edit HTML > and search for

<b:includable id='post' var='post'>

Underneath that, paste the following:


<meta expr:content='data:post.title' property='og:title'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' property='og:description'/>
<meta content='article' property='og:type'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.url' property='og:url'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.title' property='og:site_name'/>
<meta expr:content='data:post.timestampISO8601' property='article:published_time'/>
<meta content='YOUR BLOG'S TOPIC' property='article:section'/>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
<meta expr:content='data:label.name' property='article:tag'/>
</b:loop>

Replace “YOUR BLOG’S TOPIC” with a word that sums up the content of your blog. For example, if you run a lifestyle blog, use “Lifestyle”.

3. Now that your code is all set up, head over to the Rich Pins Validator and enter a link for your most recent blog post. Click Validate, and once all of your information is correct, click Apply. If you have any issues with the installation, go back and check to ensure you placed the code in the right place.

4. That’s it! It can take as little as a few days or up to a month to be accepted—it took me about a week. Pinterest will email you and set everything up from there!

Setting Up Rich Pins For WordPress

1. Thanks to the beauty of plugins, setting up rich pins on WordPress is super simple! First, go install the Yoast SEO Plugin. It’s a search engine optimization plugin that can help your blog’s search engine rankings, and even if you don’t use rich pins, I recommend installing it! After you activate the plugin, go to SEO > Social > Facebook and make sure the “Add Open Graph meta data” box is checked.

2. Head over to the Rich Pins Validator and enter a link to one of your blog posts. Then click “Validate”.

3. Make sure all of your information is correct and apply. That’s it! It could take as little as a few days or up to a month for Pinterest to email you, so be ready to wait.

While you’re waiting to be accepted, consider upping your Pinterest game by joining a group board and gaining more blog exposure!