Link to Post on Twitter and Facebook: Day 11 of the 2015 October Platform Challenge

If it feels like everything feeds into something else during this challenge, there’s a reason for that. For instance, today’s task would be difficult to accomplish if you did not…

If it feels like everything feeds into something else during this challenge, there's a reason for that. For instance, today's task would be difficult to accomplish if you did not join Facebook, join Twitter, and make a new post on your blog yesterday.

Link to Post on Twitter and Facebook

For today's platform-building task, bring it all together by sharing yesterday's blog post on your Facebook and Twitter. If you've already done it, congratulations! You're done ahead of schedule and can enjoy your day. If not, then share and get to the enjoyment of the day festivities.

Here are a few tips about linking:

  • On Facebook, an effective way to share blog posts is to include a quote from the post along with a link to the post.
  • On Twitter, space is at a premium for tweets--so use a URL shortener to make a more concise link to your blog post. Google "URL shorteners," but my favorite is bitly.com.

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Is it appropriate to link to my blog post multiple times?

All writers develop their own strategies for linking to their articles and blog posts, but here are my rules:

  • I will usually link to each blog post on every one of my social networks at least once.
  • For most social networks, I only share the blog post once. Unless there's a special reason to re-visit a post.
  • In the case of Twitter, I may link multiple times to the same post, but rarely during the same day--and never so that consecutive tweets are headed to the same post.

Here's the line you balance: You want to make sure people know when you've posted new content, but you also don't want people to think you're being too pushy with promoting your blog posts. It's a delicate balance.

Whenever I'm not sure if I'm getting on the "pushy side," I always err on the "not pushy side."

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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community, which includes editing Writer’s Market and Poet’s Market. He regularly blogs at the Poetic Asides blog and writes a poetry column for Writer’s Digest magazine. He also leads online education, speaks on writing and publishing at events around the country, and does other fun writing-related stuff.

A published poet, he’s the author of Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53) and a former Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere.

Follow him on Twitter @RobertLeeBrewer.

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Catch up on the first three days of the Platform Challenge here:

Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.