Social Media 101

I am by no means an expert in social media but have had experience running this food blog for the past 4 years plus my own personal blog from 2005 to 2013. Some friends have asked me for a quick guide on how to start their own social media machinery so here is a step-by-step guide:

1. Sign up for a free blog platform, such as blogger, wordpress or tumblr: I've been a blogger user ever since so I am more familiar with the bells and whistles of it, including its easy integration with Google Adsense. I know that wordpress, for instance, also have additional plugins which makes life of a blogger easier, while tumblr is known for those who have high resolution images aka what I call as photo blogs. Do your own homework and choose one that suits your blog's purposes the best.

2. Integrate all social media accounts on your blog. Assuming that you have already set up all your relevant social media channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, etc. you can integrate all these with a push of a button from your blog's dashboard. Also add RSS feeds and a subscribe via email option to build your subscriber list.

3. Blog on the go. I use the blogger app when I want to blog live. In fact, one of my most successful posts on this blog in terms of number of readers in less than 24 hours was when I was blogging live at a bubble tea shop here. That's also when I discovered that majority of my readers love bubble teas!   

4. Don't forget to enable all you social media channels to blogger. I use RSS Graffiti to automatically post my new blog articles on Facebook and have opted in Google+ to automatically share each blog post. However, I have to manually tweet and pin posts so if you know of a plugin that can do these automatically, please let me know.

5. If you post many high quality pictures (I stress high quality because Instagram photos don't go far on Pinterest), add a Pinterest plugin to your browser for easy pinning.

So the big question on any blogger's mind is... when should I buy my own domain name? There is no cookie cutter answer for this. For me, I waited 3+ years after starting this blog under gastronomypix.blogspot.com and already had the money from my Adsense revenues to fund my web domain for the next few years.

I'd love to hear what other tips and tricks you have to grow your social media machinery. Simply comment below.

Happy blogging!


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