Is social media for your blog worth it?

One of my rare Instagram attempts.

If you’ve ever been to a blogging workshop, I’m sure you’ve inevitably heard someone in the crowd ask, “What social media sites should I use?”. The answer seems to always be, “Whichever ones you enjoy using.” If you’re like me, that pretty much means none of them. So, what do you do?

The obvious answer is to ignore the ones you don’t like. However, there seems to be this impression that in order to be a successful blogger you need to be a power user on every popular social media platform. I don’t believe this is true. In fact, I would argue that attempting to be on every platform is stretching yourself too thin. It makes blogging exhausting when you feel the need to maintain active accounts for your blog on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, Google+, GoodReads, Pinterest, etc. and you increase your risk of burning out.

Not only that, but I have never seen a direct correlation to my increased activity on a social media platform drive a spike in unique visitors to my blog. Now, I’m a small fish in a giant pond. However, I’ve heard some extremely popular bookstagrammers say that, while their Instagram accounts have over 100k followers and their photos get thousands of likes, a corresponding post on their book blog barely gets more than 100 views.

So, is having social media accounts connected to your blog worth it or is it more of a hassle? I lean more toward the latter. Due to this, my rule of thumb has been to not use anything that feels cumbersome or makes blogging start to feel like a chore. While I’ve tried out a lot of different sites, I’ve only consistently maintained a few. Honestly, I’ve found that if you’re looking to increase traffic to your site the best piece of advice is to post consistently and engage meaningfully with fellow bloggers on their sites.

However, if you’re still looking to use social media for your blog, I would say experiment to find the one(s) that work the best for you. For me, these are the sites I’ve found the most value in and that I don’t mind using:

To drive traffic:

• Bloglovin – I’m torn on if I should consider this a social media platform. It’s more of just an easy way to follow your favorite bloggers. In fact, it’s the only way I keep track of blogs I enjoy reading.
• Twitter – Some people only follow blogs they enjoy via Twitter. So, it’s worth it to have an account and post about new updates there. It’s also an easy way to quickly engage with the community.

As a blog tool:

• GoodReads – I use this site because I love it. It’s primarily a way to keep track of my TBR pile, wishlist, and the various types of books I’ve read over the years. I cross-post my reviews there, but I don’t link to my blog from them. The only place I have a link to my site is on my profile page. So, GoodReads is mostly just a tool I use when looking up information on different books for blog posts.

Just for fun:

• Instagram – Once in a blue moon I’ll post something to Instagram. I mostly just use it for when I’m bored and want to browse pretty pictures of books under the bookstagram hashtag though.
• Litsy –  I recently jumped on this bandwagon. For those who aren’t familiar with Litsy, it’s what would happen if GoodReads, Instagram and Twitter had a baby. I’m still too new on it to say if I’ll be an active user. (FYI, I’m not BookMinx on there. I’m LateNightReads.)

Do you find value in using social media? Do you enjoy using it? 

 

Another of my Instagram pictures. Behold the awkward use of a necklace in the lower corner.