As a VPN affiliate, you should be on social media. But there is no need to over do it.
My advice for social media will go against the grain. In my view, promotion of your site via social media is also not a good investment of your precious time. You are much better off focusing almost exclusively on organic search to increase visitors to your website.
BUT, I acknowledge that it really depends on what kind of website you have and the VPNs you promote. You may well be in a VPN segment (for example, streaming Game of Thrones or the latest TV hit or sporting event) for which “viral” marketing works.
Also, I do recommend some social media efforts. I think it’s important to have a social media presence but not to spend time on it at the expense of your content efforts.
Social Media Introduction
No matter how hard I try, I doubt that I’ll be able to make a viral social media post about VPNs!
Nonetheless, I still announce my new blog posts on social media. It’s fast and easy after all.
In other words, although promoting your website via social media is a whole world unto itself, if you totally ignore it, you do so at your peril.
Therefore, at a minimum, I recommend you:
- have a Facebook page (this is a special kind of Facebook account linked to but separate from your personal Facebook account)
- like/follow your affiliate partner’s pages and other authoritative Facebook pages (but not your competitors’ Facebook pages)
- share your new blog posts via your Facebook page
Have a Facebook Page at a Minimum
It is vital these days to have a Facebook presence for your website.
Personally, I am a not big fan of Facebook but the sheer number of users and dominance of Facebook on the social networking scene mandates your website should have a presence there.
It could be that in time other players replace Facebook – Google+ tried and failed miserably – but for the time being Facebook reigns supreme.
What I like about Facebook is it comes with a lot of built-in functionality in terms of discussion, image and video uploads, posting news items, setting featured items and even some pretty good analytics and insights for your Facebook page.
Facebook makes it easy to post fresh information in a few seconds. I do this by trying to post news items of relevance to my audience. This weekly (or even more frequent) routine also helps me to keep on top of my website’s subject matter.
And, in any event, it is pretty easy to set up such a presence as the following sections will demonstrate.
What About Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest etc.?
I am not a big fan of Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest.
My blog does have a Twitter account, but I use it only to promote new blog posts, nothing more.
Nothing stops you from using Twitter in the same ways I described for Facebook (i.e., liking and sharing tweets and following other Twitter accounts and reacting to and commenting on their tweets).
I have no advice to give about other social media because my Facebook techniques, minimal Twitter effort and a little bit of backlink commenting are all the social media I have any time for.
Reddit has lots of potential, but boy-oh-boy do you have to tread carefully. If Reddit users detect any hint of spamming or self-serving promotion, they will be all over you like hungry piranhas.
I got absolutely mobbed making my first few Reddit posts about VPNs and have been too timid to try again.
Setting up a Facebook Business Page for your VPN Blog
There is no point re-hashing the already clear materials on Facebook’s own website, https://www.facebook.com/business/pages/set-up.
Facebook isn't lying: it is quick and easy to set up a page for your VPN website.
Different from Facebook pages, Facebook accounts can only belong to individual human beings. An account cannot be opened by a business or organization, let alone a product, service, project or website.
This means if you do not already have a personal Facebook account (whether in your real name or under an alias), you will first need to open one, only after which you can then create a Facebook “page” for your business. Your business page will be administered through your individual account.
For example, like most people, I have a personal Facebook account. From this account I created a page for my VPN website, https://www.facebook.com/cogipas.
This separation is no bad thing as I can make posts in a personal capacity (to my personal account) and make separate posts for my sites (to my Facebook business pages).
You need a personal Facebook account to have a business page.
This also means when interacting on Facebook you must pay extra close attention to whether you are doing so as yourself or your blog. This used to be quite confusing on Facebook, but they have made it much clearer recently.
Nonetheless, when you are liking, sharing and commenting on things on behalf of your blog, you want to make sure you are doing so using your business Facebook page, rather than your personal account. It can be easy to get them mixed up.
Setting a Name for Your Facebook Page
Another good tip is to make sure your page name captures your topic. If you have a generic name, add a few more words after it to better describe it. On Facebook, the vast majority of people will only see your Page’s name so make it count!
For example, “Maple Leaf” won’t mean much but “Maple Leaf VPN Reviews” tells a more complete story and increases the chance of curious Facebook users interacting with your Page, hopefully liking it and, better yet, clicking through to your blog.
Setting a Username (Domain Name) for Your Facebook Page
Once you create a Facebook page for your website and name it, claim a Facebook username (domain name) for it.
Doing this will give your page a shorter and snappier Facebook website address.
If you want to prevent having an ugly Facebook page address like https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cogipascom-Complete-Guide-to-Internet-Privacy-Anonymity-Security/169330593107681, you need to set what’s called a username. In most cases, you simply want your username to mirror your page name.
For example, before claiming my Facebook username Cogipas which resulted in the page URL domain name https://www.facebook.com/cogipas/, the Facebook URL for my page was the long ugly one above. Quite a mouthful!
While logged in as yourself, use the caret (downward triangle) icon to use Facebook as your page.
You may need to rummage around a bit, but look for the Setting you need to change (I haven't detailed it here because Facebook changes it all the time!)
At some point, you may receive a warning that you must continue as yourself (personal account), which is fine, so go ahead.
Select the username carefully because Facebook will only let you change it once.
If the username is available, you will have secured a nice, shorter and snappier Facebook-style domain name for your Facebook page.
First Steps for your Blog’s Facebook Page
Once your blog’s Facebook page is set up, take the following steps.
Complete Your Facebook Page’s ‘About’ Information
For the newly created page, fill in the About information and upload some pleasing profile and background images. Ideally, these should match the look and feel of your VPN website.
This is one of those times it may be worth hiring a professional designer for on Fiverr.
If your blog does not cater to a local market, you are best leaving geographical information out. For example, I happen to be living in Vienna now, but I don’t add that to my blog’s page because (rightly or wrongly) identifying that location could turn off my potential audience in bigger markets such as the USA or UK.
For Quick & Easy Wins, Share News Items to Your Facebook Page
A quick and easy way to keep your Facebook page “fresh” is to share relevant news items. This also has the added benefit of keeping you up-to-date on your topic.
I use Google Alerts to monitor topics relevant to my website and then share the most interesting items on my Facebook page.
To do so, simply copy and paste the news item’s URL in the Write a post… box and then select Publish. You can share them without any additional comments or you can add your own comment before you select Share Now.
It takes literally 5 seconds to share a news item (or other URL) on your Facebook page feed.
You can also share relevant videos and images in this same way. This is a great (and easy) way to share videos on YouTube or infographics of your VPN affiliate partners.
If you come across interesting posts on other Facebook pages, you can share them too in similar fashion and add any additional comments or observations you may have.
While these activities all happen away from your website and therefore won’t help you directly generate commissions or other conversions, they do build your brand and can help generate interest in your website.
Build an Audience by Following Other Facebook Pages and Liking Posts in your Pages’ Feed
Your newly created Facebook business page can also Like or Follow other Facebook pages. For example, I like and follow several organizations and businesses that are relevant to the VPN industry and the brands I support.
Find the Facebook pages of your VPN affiliate partners and other reputable sources of information for the industry. Non-profits and associations are usually good for this. Then, Like or Follow them.
When you follow Facebook pages, they will show up as a list box (with icons) on your Facebook page under the heading Pages liked by this Page. You may have to hunt a bit for this list box as its location on your Facebook page may change depending on the device or web browser you use.
For example, refer to https://www.facebook.com/cogipas/pages_feed/ and replace “cogipas” with your Facebook page’s username.
When you follow other Facebook pages in this way, their posts will show up in your page’s Feed, which only you can see. Visit your page’s Feed and you will be able to keep up-to-date with their posts too and can share them with a single click or tap.
Easily find posts to share by accessing your Facebook page's feed.
You should spend a few minutes on a regular basis (daily over morning coffee is a great time) to Like and Share posts in your Page’s Feed. When sharing posts, make an intelligent comment or two when inspired to do so.
It takes about 5 minutes to scroll through your Facebook business page's Feed to Like and Share posts from the pages you are following.
These efforts are all cross-pollinating and will make your own Facebook page look active and fresh.
Other Facebook users will see your page’s likes and shared posts, might grow curious about your page and end up following your page or even ultimately visiting your blog and generating a conversion for you.
But probably not. That’s why you shouldn’t invest too much time on these efforts.
Other than sharing your new (or revised) blog posts via your Facebook page (discussed below), the steps above are really the only active ones you “must” take for a decent social media presence.
A Word about Commenting on Facebook
You could easily spend countless hours commenting on Facebook posts in the hopes of attracting Likes to your own Facebook page. But I would repeat that for most bloggers that time is better spent drafting and publishing good content.
By all means go ahead and comment on something that will demonstrate your expertise and perhaps gain your Facebook page some interest and followers, but don’t set aside hours per day or even week doing so.
That sort of strategy can come later (and even be contracted out to a freelancer) once you generate a decent regular monthly income from your site.
And also beware of trolls. Often your self-perceived clever comment can attract ire or just downright nasty people. They might launch a mission of posting nasty comments on your Facebook page mocking you.
My recommendation about interacting with posts in your page’s Feed is a much more time-friendly way to gain almost as many benefits, especially if you have named your Facebook page properly. It’s much safer (and quicker) just to react to posts showing in your page’s Feed.
Promote Your VPN Posts on Your Facebook Page
Every time you publish a new post on your VPN website, share it on Facebook.
Doing so is this easy:
- go to the newly published post on your VPN website
- copy its URL
- paste this URL into your Facebook Page’s Write something… prompt
- confirm that your post’s meta description and featured image are displayed
- backspace over the URL and, optionally, write a comment or leave the space blank
- select Publish
That's it!
It’s so quick and easy that there is no excuse for not promoting your new blog posts this way.
You can use the additional options available to choose a different thumbnail image of those available, delay the publishing to a future date (handy if you will be travelling or away) or even spend a little money to “boost” the post.
If you chose to boost the post, follow the same advice I have about Google Ads: start slowly and with a modest budget (for example, $1 per day), learn from the results, adjust and then repeat.
Top Tip: Use the Desktop App
When posting to your Facebook page, I recommend you do so from a desktop computer. While Facebook’s 'Pages Manager' app for iOS and Android is pretty good, too often errors or hiccups occur which have led me to delete the published post and re-publish it via a desktop.
The best example is when sharing a news article. On a desktop computer, you can toggle through the different potential thumbnail images to use. In contrast, the Android app gives you no choice. Too often I have used the app only to be disappointed about the thumbnail image used with the post.
Unless you are in a crunch, wait until you are behind a desktop computer to post to your Facebook page.
There are plenty of apps such as Hootsuite that will let you simultaneously post to multiple social media accounts. However, my experience with them has not been great. Often something goes wrong and you anyway end up having to delete the post and re-publish it manually.
Unless you are juggling many social media accounts, I would say post manually as this ensures you maintain the most control over what is posted and how.
Wrap-Up
Social media is everywhere. This means you all but have to embrace it as part of the promotional efforts for your VPN website.
But there's good news: it's free and doesn't have to take up much of your time.
Set up a Facebook page, follow some of your VPN brands as well as other industry players, share their posts, and share your own new blog posts too.
If you do this, you can tick the social media box for your VPN website.
