Use Facebook to bring engagement to your blog

Blogging, unlike writing an article, is all about going “out” where the people are to engage your audience.

When we began blogging years ago we referenced what others wrote on their blogs. The technology, whether it was “trackbacks” or vanity RSS feeds, let us know if another blogger had mentioned us or what we had to say on our blog.

With the huge volume of content being produced, trackbacks and vanity RSS feeds are no longer possible.

The result is we have a whole lot of talking (writing) and no one listening. With no listening, there’s no engagement.

Don’t dismiss engagement either. It’s the stuff relationships and reputations are made of.

Believe it or not, Facebook may be the answer for bringing engagement to your blogging. God knows if you want to go where the people are on the Internet, you go to Facebook. Everyone in America is on Facebook.

How do you bring engagement to your blog via Facebook? Technologist, entrepreneur and blogger of two decades, Dave Winer (@davewiner) shared that he has started posting his blog posts in entirety to Facebook.

Why? Engagement.

First, there is no engagement on my blog. I have comments turned off.

Almost no engagement on Medium. Three people hearted my post. One highlight. No comments.

But on Facebook, even though the piece looks like crap and has no links, the post has a handful of comments and 20 reactions. I have no idea how many views, FB doesn’t provide users with that info, as far as I know.

Winer nails the need for engagement.

There’s the reason I wanted the connection. I missed knowing what people think, and getting ideas from people who read my stuff. Facebook has that.

I have started doing much the same thing. I post my whole post or at least enough of my post for people to get my point. That way people can engage me (like, comment or share) without going to my blog.

At its best, blogging is all about expressing ideas, thinking out loud, responding to what I’ve read elsewhere, meeting people I have not met before, getting to know people better, building friendships, building respect when friendship is not possible and advancing thinking in areas I am passionate about.

Facebook brings this. Blogging without taking your blog posts “out” for engagement doesn’t.

Taking your posts to Facebook doesn’t make having an independent blog site any less important. Heck, having your own blog site may be more important.

As you get out and network on Facebook you need to have a place where people can see your body of work. You need to control your content and the design of your site. You need to have your content accessible in other ways – Google searches, email sharing and other social media sharing.

I’m with Winer on bringing engagement to my blog via Facebook. I get few if any comments on my blog. But when I post to Facebook I receive a lot of engagement.

Learning, friendships, collaboration and more from blogging combined with Facebook. Give it a try.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Francois Proulx