When you have written an article and posted it on your website, your work is far from finished. Promote, Promote, Promote! There are many places and MeWe should be on your to-do list.
Don’t assume that people will simply find articles on your blog or website once you have posted them. They won’t and you must promote them daily, weekly and monthly. Never stop!
Promotion starts with making sure your latest post appears on your site’s home page, but that is just the first step and you must promote your site and articles across many social networks. In this article I look specifically at MeWe but there are other places to promote your site, see Secrets to successful social media promotion.
Why promote with MeWe?
Facebook has 2 billion users and it dwarfs all other social networks, so obviously that is a great place to promote you site, but there are millions of people on MeWe, so it is not to be ignored.
On Facebook you are a small fish in a big pond, but on MeWe you could be a big fish in a small pond. Fewer competitors (people promoting their sites) could enable you to stand out more.
How many people are active on MeWe? It is hard to find any accurate figures and it is constantly changing anyway. When Google+ shut down a couple fo years ago, many people migrated to MeWe and growth was said to be 300 to 400% in 2018 and even higher in 2019.
Google Play Store reports that the Android MeWe app has over 5 million installs. There is likely to be a similar number of iOS user and so the number of active people on MeWe looks to be somewhere above 10 million. That is small by Facebook standards, but wherever there are large numbers of people, you should be promoting your site.
We can only guess at the numbers of people using MeWe, but it is a growing social network and this makes it one to keep an eye on. Here are some of the benefits to bloggers and website owners:
- Millions of active users you can promote your site to
- Build following of people that like your content
- Build a group or community in your area of interest
- Build a page to interact with followers
Open a MeWe account
Go to the MeWe website and sign up. It is free and takes only a minute. MeWe is focused on privacy and promotes it as one of the benefits. Unlike other social networks that collect every scrap of information about you and use it to boost advertising, MeWe has no advertising and doesn’t share your details with anyone.
The MeWe home feed
Although the menus, buttons and screen layout is very different to Facebook, it actually works in a similar way. You post comments, links, photos and videos on your home feed, just as with Facebook. The home feed also shows posts from other people you follow. In many ways it is like Facebook with a different layout.
Posts can be public or private.
Public posts: Not really public, only public in the sense that anyone on MeWe can see them. No-one outside of MeWe can see them.
Private posts: Only people you are friends with can see your posts.
MeWe has its own version of a ‘like’ button, but it is really a collection of emoji and you can use thumbs up or down, hearts, plus signs, and more to indicate what you think about a post.
Disadvantages: My home feed is at mewe.com/i/rolandwaddilove although if you try that you will soon see a disadvantage for anyone wanting to promote their site, products or services. Only MeWe members can see MeWe content and non-members cannot see anything. You need to sign up and sign in to see it. It is therefore no use for building backlinks.
Advantages: You can brand your home page, groups and pages with your own photo and cover image. You can promote it on your site or your blog and get people – fans, customers, interested parties – to follow you on MeWe. When you post updates, your followers will see them. You could build a following on MeWe and share content with them.
Use MeWe groups
A group on MeWe is a place where people with the same interests can chat, post messages, photos, videos, and links. A group should be dedicated to a specific topic, such as Cute Dogs, Scuba Diving, Delicious Vegetarian Food and so on. There are thousands of groups on MeWe covering a wide range of topics, but there is room for one more – your own personal group.
You are probably familiar with Facebook groups and MeWe groups are the same thing. You can create one or more groups of your own and you can join groups created by others. You can chat with like-minded people in groups, get help or provide it, and share links to your site or posts.
The Search box at the top of the page enables you to search for groups that interest you and you can then join them. Just enter a keyword that describes your interest. My own group Blogging and Bloggers can be found by entering either ‘blogging’ or ‘bloggers’.
Mouse over the Group icon in the toolbar and the groups you belong to are listed and clicking one goes to it. There is also a New Group link at the top which can be used to create your own group.
It is straightforward and it just requires a few details like the group name, a description, the category (Cyclists, Photography, DIY, whatever), a cover image and a colour. These can all be configured to align with your blog, website or niche.
Advantages to bloggers and websites: You can brand the group with the same colour, cover image or logo, or choose something related to your site’s niche. If your site covers rock climbing, a group for rock climbers where people can meet and chat and exchange thoughts and information could be a great benefit for your site. You have full control over who can join, so you could make a private group specifically for customers of your products or services.
Whether you create your own group or join others, they can be a great place to promote your website, products and services. Some groups have thousands of members.
- Search for groups in your interest area
- Join groups related to your subject
- Create your own group if you like a challenge
It can be hard to get people to join your group unless you put some time and effort into promoting it. This is true on all social media services. However, it can be a great way to get people interested in your subject area, whether it is food, sport, tech, dogs, cats, sci-fi, and so on.
Maintaining a busy group takes time and effort. Like Facebook groups, you occasionally get troublemakers who post spam, negative comments and bad links. As the owner, you need to watch for this and if necessary, kick people out, remove bad posts and so on. MeWe has features and controls that help, but mostly it is down to you to make sure the group runs smoothly.
MeWe pages
Facebook has pages and so does MeWe and they work in much the same way. You can create a page and brand it with your blog cover image, company logo and name, and so on. You can then post interesting content for people that follow your blog or website.
One difference between MeWe and Facebook is that MeWe charges $2.99 a month for pages. There is no advertising on MeWe and to support the service there are a few premium features and pages is one of them.
As with Facebook, you could build up a big following for your MeWe page and it could be a worthwhile feature. It is something you can put off till later and there are plenty of free features on MeWe.
MeWe posting strategy
As with all social networks, you will get more people following your account, more likes on your posts, more people following your page and joining your group if you actively engage with people. Don’t think of it as a way to promote your site simply by sharing links, think of it as a way to build a community of like-minded people in your subject niche. Talk to people, discuss interesting topics, share your knowledge and get to know people.
As you interact with people, you can occasionally refer to your site or share a link to a post that is relevant to the discussion.
Spam is a problem on all social networks and posting links to your site several times a day might earn you a reputation as a spammer. It is very tempting to join as many groups as you can and when there is a new post on your site, post the link in every one of them. That is a bad idea because it looks spammy.
If you do share a link to a post on your site, always include a couple of descriptive sentences and make sure it is unique every time. Never write the same thing twice and never share the same thing twice. Make sure it is relevant and don’t post random links.
Don’t spam, engage with people, hep them, chat with them, and occasionally post a link to your site.
Create a smart profile
The content of your MeWe profile is more important than you realise and the contents are searchable. Go to your profile and edit the About Me section.
Make sure keywords are used, so if you are interested in running and fitness then make sure ‘running’ and ‘fitness’ appear in About Me. When someone uses the search facility at the top of every MeWe page to search for ‘running’ or ‘fitness’ you will come up in the search results.
Keywords in your profile’s About Me help people to find you. If they can find you they may follow you and join your groups and pages.
Action points
- Join MeWe if you haven’t already done so
- Use the Search box at the top to find people to follow and groups to join
- Engage with people, don’t just blast a lot of links at everyone
- Create your own group related to your website niche and build the membership
- Post links to groups and your profile on your website to get people to join
