How to Support Your Friend’s Blog Post

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Blogs are a ton of fun to write, and if you’re like me, you have a handful of friends who write one. You probably see them posting about it on Facebook or Twitter occasionally, and it would be really nice to support your friend’s blog from time to time. They may even ask you to share it or give it a “shout out.”

And of course, being the good friend that you are, you want to help her out. So let’s talk about how to support your friend’s blog post in ways that are easy for you and meaningful for her.  Doing these things don’t take much time or effort at all, don’t cost a penny, and will help your friend grow her blog.

But first, let’s talk about why helping your friend grow her blog matters. Successful blogs can be not only a great way to express yourself, they can eventually contribute to your family’s financial well-being too! Some bloggers are even able to blog full-time and support their families.  And it’s great karma!

Since I’ve been blogging for a while now, people often ask me how they can support me and their other friends’ blogs. They usually also mention something about being able to do so quickly since they are busy people, and they want something that doesn’t have a cost associated with it. So I recommend starting with following their blog’s social media accounts, subscribing to her newsletter if she has one, AND any of the following 15 things.

15 things you can do to support your friend’s blog post

It’s really easy. I promise! Other than the time it takes to read the post, most of these actions take only a few seconds. Let’s talk about how you can help your friend share her blog post and why these actions are helpful.

Facebook Reactions and Shares

1.  When you see your friend sharing her latest medicines pharmacy blog post on Facebook, hover over the like button and select one of the reaction emoticons other than the like button.

When you choose one of the reactions, it tells Facebook’s algorithm to rank it higher so more people will see it.

2.  Leave a comment about the article on her Facebook post.  That will also tell Facebook to share her post more widely.

3.  Share her Facebook post to your own timeline.  You can share it either from her Facebook post, or you can share it to Facebook directly from the article itself.

Again, this tells Facebook that her post is important content, but when you share it directly from the blog post, it also tells Google that the post is important too. You can’t really go wrong with either type of sharing.

4.  Since you left a comment on her Facebook post, copy that comment and post it again in the comment section on the blog itself.

The reason this is valuable is that you’re telling Google and the other search engines to rank this post higher in their algorithms. Also, when you leave a comment on Facebook, that will only be seen while the post is active.  Facebook status updates get buried after a while. Since her blog post is permanent, your comment left on the actual blog post gives her more long-term benefit.

Sharing on Twitter

Want to help your #blogging friends? Here are 15 easy ways to support your friend’s blog.

5.  If you use Twitter, tweet her post. Most bloggers have sharing buttons and some include what’s called a “Click to Tweet” function where they will suggest a pre-written tweet like you see above in this article. All you need to do is be signed into Twitter, click the “Click to Tweet” button, and you’re good to go!

Don’t be afraid to tweet the article more than once, particularly if she has included more than one “Click to Tweet.” You don’t want to spam people with it, but sharing a couple of tweets about it is okay.

This is particularly helpful because Google recognizes and displays relevant tweets in their search pages.

6. If the “Click to Tweet” doesn’t include her Twitter username and you happen to know what it is, include her username at the end of the tweet if there are enough characters remaining.

Doing so lets her know that you tweeted it as she will receive a notification so she may respond or RT your tweet.

Sharing on Pinterest

7.  If your friend’s blog post has images, you can pin any of those to Pinterest. Typically, you can either hover over the image in the post to highlight a sharing button.  And if you have time and there’s more than one, consider pinning another one too.

To do this easily, you’ll find that many blogs have sharing buttons on their sidebar or on the post itself. If you click the Pinterest button, it will pull up a selection of pinnable images for you to make your selection(s).

Here’s a quick note about that – if the post has images that are vertical (taller than they are wide), choose those to pin. Pinterest prefers vertical images.  Pinterest is a visual search engine rather than social media, so it will help her blog post to be found when you share it. Sharing to Pinterest also gives your friend more long-term value as those pins remain on your boards unless you delete them.

Sharing on LinkedIn

8.  Depending on the type of content your friend creates, you may want to share it on LinkedIn. I find you can share most professional posts to LinkedIn. Again, you can use the sharing buttons you see on the sidebar or in the body of the post.

Sharing professional content on LinkedIn (social media content like this is great to share there) gives your friend a boost while also keeping your profile there active and at the forefront of those networking with you.

Sharing on Google+ (Update: Google+ is no longer active)

9. I know, I know. Not many people use Google+ anymore. But shares there really have a lot of SEO juice which will be super helpful in supporting your friend’s blog. But if you’re logged into Google, hit that G+ button and give it a share.

Google loves it when you use their products to promote. So shares there are particularly valuable to helping your friend’s post get found.

10. If you don’t have Google+ but you have a Google account, you can still use Google+ to help out your friend.  What you would do is look for your friend’s social media follow buttons on her blog. Then select the one for Google+ if she has one. It will load her profile.  You’ll see some posts. What you want to do is look at the bottom of each post for a round +1 button.  Click that.

Using the +1 button on Google+ works similarly to Facebook’s like and reaction buttons.  It tells Google to rank that post.

If you have time, and this is super quick, you can click the +1 button on a handful of posts while you’re there.

Sharing on StumbleUpon (Update: StumbleUpon is now called Mix)

11. StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking site. If you have a StumbleUpon account, you can easily click the Stumble or the SU button (typically found with the other sharing buttons) to give the post a “thumb’s up.”

Giving the article a “thumbs up” helps to offer her article to more StumbleUpon users.

YouTube

12.  Sometimes a blog post will have an embedded YouTube video. You’ll often find these on DIY posts that teach you how to do something or is entertaining. When you watch the video, you want to let the window for it stay open for at least 10 seconds.

Keeping the window open that long counts it as a “view.” Your friend wants her number of views to be high.

YouTube is owned by Google, so interacting with another Google property again helps Google to know to rank her post higher.

13.  You can also give your friend’s video a “thumbs up” if you like the video. People like to watch videos that others have enjoyed.

14. YouTube also has sharing buttons you can use to share the video to other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. I find that those are the best places to share a video.

Other Sharing Platforms

15. There are so many ways you can support your friend’s blog post. Many blog sharing buttons will also have a button that works as a “more options” button. If you look at the sharing buttons here, you’ll see that the last button doesn’t look like a familiar social media icon. That’s my more options button.  When you click that, you’ll be taken to other sharing platforms.  Some are additional social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Delicious, or Digg. You can save posts to read later on Flipboard or Pocket. Others are specific social networks hosted in other countries like VContakt. You’ll see that some are content-specific; one of my favorites of these is Yummly.  You guessed it; Yummly is for sharing recipes. If you see one of these that is applicable to you that you’re comfortable using, give it a share.

People feel comfortable sharing things that are popular

Ultimately, people feel better about sharing things when they see that other people have shared it already. A lot of people are uncomfortable being the first to share something, so when you step up to do that, you’re helping your friend to get the ball rolling.

Also, when your friend’s blog has sharing counts enabled, no one else can see who has done the sharing. So if you have taken the time to support your friend’s blog post across multiple social media platforms, each of those may be counted to drive the numbers up.  (Not all sharing buttons count shares to every platform.)

If you have questions about how to support your friend’s blog, let us know in the comments.  We’d also love to hear other suggestions you have for ways to support your friend’s blog posts. And please feel free to share this with your friends who blog. They may find it useful.

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