Where Should You Be Online? {Craft Your Blog}

Last week I said I was going to write something about promoting your blog, and the more I thought about it the more I realized it really needs to be a series of posts. And maybe I don’t know how to write them just yet. This is one of those “write what you want to know” moments, so if you have any questions about using social media or other ways to promote your blog, let me know and in the coming weeks I’ll try to answer them.

So, before getting into specifics I thought I would touch on the matter of feeling like you need to be everywhere when it comes to social media. There are new hot social networks all the time, and some experts will tell you that you need to have a presence on all of them. Or you’ll hear that Facebook doesn’t work any more so you need to be on Google+, where I get the suspicion only bloggers hang out, but that’s another issue.

And then you get so overwhelmed with all you’re supposed to be doing and everywhere you’re supposed to be commenting and sharing and whatever else that you just don’t do any of it.

And that’s not a good solution, either. Because it is true that you need to be involved in social media to help people see and interact with your blog (aka you), but it’s not true that you have to try to be everywhere.

So, Where Should You Be?

If you don’t need to be everywhere, then where should you focus your attention? You need to figure out where your readers (or likely readers) are. And that’s admittedly not always easy if you haven’t been posting everywhere already.

I know from looking at my analytics that Pinterest and Facebook are my number three and four referrers (behind Google and direct traffic). Twitter doesn’t show up until 25 and Google+ isn’t even in the top 50 (though I just started using it again so that may change in time).

This tells me that I should spend much more time on Pinterest and Facebook (even with the problems we’re all having with Facebook right now) than on other networks. If I needed to let something slide, it ought to be Twitter or Google (and it often is).

You may not have stats to back it up, but you may know that you get more interaction on Twitter or have more fun on G+ (that matters, too) so you want to focus there. It’s about what makes sense for you and the people you’re trying to reach than what some expert (and I am so not one of those) says you should do.

Do you know where your traffic comes from? I’d love to hear if you know where you ought to be focusing your energy or if you make a change based on thinking about it this way.