One of the most common mistakes I see new bloggers make is they set up their blog but forget about the social media supporting system. Have you fallen into this trap? Didn’t know your blog has a system media support system? Then read on.
The Social Media Support System
Blogging is about more than just setting up a blog and posting to it on a constant basis. Successful blogs are backed up by a social media support system to help bring in the traffic and reinforce the blog’s brand. For example, John Chow dot Com pretty much owns the John Chow name on the Internet. There’s the John Chow blog of course, but it’s backed up by the John Chow Twitter account, John Chow Facebook page, John Chow LinkedIn page, John Chow Flickr, John Chow Friend Feed, John Chow YouTube, etc. This support base of John Chow social media properties has allowed me to dominate the Internet for my name. Do a search for John Chow on Google and the first 10 pages of results are all about me.
It is not enough to just set up your blog. You need to back it up by taking all the social media accounts for your blog name. Many readers have found my blog though a social media channel. If I didn’t own the name for that channel, the reader wouldn’t have found me.
If someone has already taken your social media name, then there’s not much you can do about it unless your blog name is also a registered trademark. This is why it’s important to get this all done from the start when you know the names are available. If you become successful, others will try to leech off you by setting up a copycat blog or pretending to be you on a social media network. The best time to prevent that is at the beginning by registering all the names.
There are hundreds of social media networks. You don’t need to take your name for all of them but you should make sure you are registered with the main ones. When starting a new blog, register all the social media names at the same time as you domain name. This ensures your blog will have the support it needs to build a brand and lock down your name.