Greetings fellow humans! ‘Tis I, Matthew Kadish, author extraordinaire and certified evil genius! For those of you reading this who are not familiar with me, I’m sure that will change once I finish building my doomsday device and take over the world so that I can enact my dastardly plan of subjugating humanity by forcing them to read cheap knock-offs of Twilight written by unskilled fan fiction authors.
But until such time, I shall have to make do with spreading awareness of my brilliance by helping other authors become better at their own essential skills. So today, I am going to share with you a quick-and-easy way to cross-promote your blog posts across various social media websites. And not only is this brain-dead simple to do, it is also free!
As I’m sure you’re aware, if you are a self-published author (or even a traditionally published author), much of the work of promoting yourself falls squarely on your shoulders. Thus, it is important to spread awareness of your content far and wide.
Most authors have a presence on social media that they prefer. Some like to blog, some like to tweet, some like to Facebook (it’s a verb, deal with it), and on and on and on. The problem is that authors can get overwhelmed, that they neglect so many other social networks in favor of one, or they spend way too much time trying to update all their social media that it’s almost like a full-time job. This can lead to authors getting frustrated and burned out. After all, what good is having 11,000 twitter followers if every blog post you make goes without a single comment?
It should be a no-brainer that if you are spending time cultivating a strong social media presence, you’ll want a way to make your followers aware of your latest projects, releases, and special announcements. Being the genius that I am, I find that I prefer to spend my time doing one thing that will get me multiple benefits, as opposed to multiple things that will get me one benefit. Thus, I’ve devised a diabolical way of cross-promoting one’s content across the most important social media platforms in existence!
Well, maybe I didn’t devise it, per say. But I use it! So… whatever. Moving on.
If you have a self-hosted Wordpress blog (and if you don’t, what are you waiting for?), this method is pretty flawless and easy to do. If you want to use this method and don’t have a self-hosted Wordpress blog, you can easily set one up just to make your life easier.
Wordpress comes pre-installed with a plugin called “Jetpack.” This offers Wordpress users a series of wonderful little add-ons to their blog which can make it look really professional, increase functionality, and make the blogger’s life easier all-around. So the first thing you’ll want to do is activate this plug-in.
Next, when you go to the Jetpack control panel, you’ll see lots of options available to you. The one we’ll want to focus on is called “Publicize.”
What the Publicize plugin does is it allows you to link major social networks with your blog, so that when you post to the blog, that content is cross-posted to all the linked social network accounts immediately. The social networks supported are:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Tumblr
- Path
- Google+
Those are 6 of the major social networks in existence. Hopefully more will be added in time, but for now, these are the ones the plugin supports. All you need to do is connect to your account for each network and grant permission for Wordpress to post to it. You just click the “Connect” button and enter your information. If you’re already logged into the network you’re attempting to connect to, you just have to click a few approval buttons to complete the process. It takes mere seconds to get set up.
Once you’re done, whenever you publish a new blog post, it will automatically get published to ALL the social networks you’ve set up in the plugin. I personally use Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Google+, so those four services get my content automatically as soon as I publish something on my brilliant blog.
Is good, no?
You can also set it up to post to a Facebook page as opposed to your personal account, in case you were wondering. So if you have a fan page for yourself as an author, you can update that as opposed to your personal profile.
Once you get the easy cross-posting set up, all you have to worry about is updating 1 service (your blog) and growing your followings on all the services you feel are important to focus on. This is not only a great time-saver, but it will help you to reach a broader audience and create a wider appeal for your work as an author.
If you want more tips on writing or marketing your material, please feel free to check out my personal blog at
www.MatthewKadish.com, so you can see an example of how I’ve set this system up myself. But I feel I should warn you, once you go Matt, you never go back! Only visit me if you are okay with becoming obsessed over a middle-aged bald man with a superiority complex. If that does not frighten you, then stop by and check out my other articles.
Until then, happy writing! And here’s to cross-promoting your content the lazy way!
About the Author
Matthew Kadish is an independent author and world-recognized evil genius. When he isn't writing or being evil, he enjoys relaxing at the beach and videos of puppies. Much like Scottish cuisine, most of his literary works have been based on dares. He currently lives in Las Vegas and always bets on black, because Westley Snipes has yet to steer him wrong in life. He is the most talented author ever. His mother tells him so every day.
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