It may take some effort on your part, but linking YouTube and Facebook to your blog can generate a great deal of traffic – especially if you manage to create a viral video. One of the greatest things about using social media to improve your blog is that it’s free to do. As long as you’re willing to put in the time yourself, using Facebook and YouTube can create a complimentary trinity with your blog.
Why Should You Use YouTube?
- Free to use: Aside from the hardware and software you choose to purchase to make your videos, YouTube is absolutely free to anyone willing to put themselves out there for others to watch.
- Easy to integrate with your own website: The embed coding that is accessible on every video of the website will allow you to add the material to your own. Simply copy the code and paste into your pages to show off your favorite videos to your blog’s audience.
- Social media sharing for greater promotion: Viewers are able to share the video on their favorite social media hubs such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more. If your video is of great quality to the viewer, it can quickly go viral across his or her friends and family.
In order to make a video on YouTube, you really don’t have to spend a great deal of money. Many successful “celebrities” on the video channel started with a webcam or simply using desktop recording software in order to produce tutorials and other content. Of course, this is going to be greatly dependent on the type of videos you want to create in order to share them with the world.
Gamers would use something like Frapps or perhaps Cam Studio because the programs are free and can record gameplay. Even your smartphone can be used to create a style for your channel.
Why Facebook?
By the end of 2013, there were more than 1.3 billion active users monthly on Facebook. Considering the population of the planet is around seven billion, this means that approximately 14-percent of the population of Earth is actively reading status updates and posting images of children on the social site.
Although this number doesn’t take into the consideration of some individuals having multiple accounts, it can still be use to help understand just how many people visit Facebook on a monthly basis.
From your blogging point of view,
[quote]What can Facebook do to help you develop your website?[/quote]
- Creating a page for the blog or business: You can create a page specifically for your blog or business and be the administrator of such. With this page, you can create a following of fans that will see when you add material to your status. Just don’t forget to “like” your own blog or business page.
- Easy to add your content: When you create a new post, go to your blog’s “page” and paste the link. This automatically adds the title and description of the post that you can share and like. Normally, users will add a short snippet of information about the material before pasting the link.
- Gives fans something to follow: It may take a while to build a fan-base, but the trouble is worth it in the long run. Before long, your fans could be sharing your material creating a web of potential visitors to your blog.
- A single share to improve your visits: If the right person shares a post that you made on your Facebook page, many of his or her friends may click on the link to visit the site looking forward to reading the actual material.
- Popularity: Nearly every business has a Facebook profile, even if it’s incomplete. However, you want to make sure that your profile is completely filled out and even updated with regular images. The more active you are in Facebook, the more active visitors will be to your blog.
Putting It All Together: Linking YouTube And Facebook
Once you have your Facebook profile ready and your YouTube account created, it’s time to combine the might of these two together to increase traffic to your blog. Remember, the more detailed and professional each of these profiles look, the better viewers and visitors will respond.
How do you get started grabbing their attention?
1. Linking Accounts: In YouTube, make sure your Facebook profile and website address are listed. YouTube has areas where you can enter this information and the system will show icons pertaining to those sites. This will give viewers that see your profile a method to visit one of your other pages.
2. Links in the description: Once you upload your video, don’t be afraid to add the links to your Facebook profile and your blog. This gives viewers a second method to visit one of your other pages.
3. References in Video: It doesn’t hurt to practice a bit of shameless advertising within your videos. Annotation links can also be created to give viewers a third option to visit your site.
4. Sharing as You: Make sure that you switch back to your Facebook profile. Once you have, click the “share” icon in your video’s properties to share it with all of your own friends and family.
5. Copy to Blog’s Page: Copy the address of where the video is, which will be in your address bar when you’re watching. Paste this address into your blog’s page under the area for “Status.” This will create a small video and link in the page’s news for others to see.
Once your videos are up on your channel, you can copy the code and add them to your blog’s post. This will give visitors to your blog a video to watch while spreading the word about your YouTube channel. It’s a good idea to add between 300 and 400 words that contain a short synopsis of what the video is about on the same page as your video for the search engines to crawl.
Don’t forget to add a Facebook link that will send visitors to your profile within your blog.
This acts the same way that the YouTube link does. If you are using WordPress, there are a handful of plugins that can make this extremely easy.
There you have it. Each of these three sites now have the ability to send traffic to each other to make a web of social content. Without spending money on marketing, it may take a few weeks to a couple of months depending on your own activity for the snowball to start rolling.
When it does, your visitor and fan base will grow. Just make sure you keep the content on these three sites regular. An hour or two per day maintaining your content will make an impact in the popularity of your blog.
Ken Myers is the founder of www.longhornleads.com & has learned over the years the importance of focusing on what the customer is looking for and literally serving it to them. He doesn’t try to create a need, instead he tries to satisfy the existing demand for information on products and services.
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