Social Media Sharing is the most powerful tool of modern times. From corporates to NGOs to private individuals everyone is looking at ways to leverage the power of social sharing and reap its benefits.
Do you know that Social Media shares are driving more traffic to websites than search engines? Have you been looking for ways to increase the shares on your post but still do not know how to create that magic?
After all who wouldn’t want their content to be the talk of the town and go absolutely viral? Easier said than done you think. Well actually, you can make your blog/ website get there just by following some very basic rules.
First things first, why is it important to increase the number of your social shares. Here is why:
• You need to create a space for yourself in the deluge of information that is getting shared on the internet every moment.
• Sharing improves the SEO ratings for your content.
• Social sharing is the perfect way to present your content to like minded readers: your friends and their friends.
Now that you know why social sharing makes sense, here are some foolproof methods to get going and achieve that social presence that you have always dreamt of. However, do remember that Rome was not built in a day and neither can you expect a staggering number of re-shares overnight. But by implementing these methods you will slowly and steadily create a brand for your own content which will only grow over time.
The Dangers of Social Sharing
Before we get started on this it is important to realize the perils of this ball game. How would you ensure that people shared your content ? Would you put a social locker so that people would not be able to view your content unless they shared it? Would you force your readers to sign up to your feed before they can view content?
The dangers of these methods are that your readers could get annoyed with you, and this might work adversely for your long term success.
Really social sharing is a skill. And like all others, this one can be perfected with practice.
Here are some practical social media marketing tips to get you started on this
.1. Understanding the sharing habit:
Why do people share content?
They do it because
They think it can help their friends someway. • It gives them a sense of purpose. • They want to draw attention to the things they feel strongly about and support a cause. • They want to grow their network.
What we understand here that only one of these objectives is personal. Rather, people want to share to create a connect between people or identify themselves with a purpose. Hence creating content which helps people in these objectives should be the first step. How do you do this?
1. Create content that will help people to look better in the eyes of others (e.g. Look smart, cool, etc.) 2. Create believable content which is well backed up with references, statistics and testimonials.
3. Create simple content. People have very less attention spans and most don’t read a post from end to end before sharing. Hence, make your content short and attention grabbing (catchy titles, bullet points, short sentences and so on)
2. Create content that will have an emotional effect on the readers.
Readers experience different emotions while reading your content. The emotions will vary but it has been found through detailed studies that these emotions are often the main trigger which prompt people to share your content.
People may share your content because it makes them feel happy, confident, anxious, angry, fearsome ,disgusted, surprised and so on.
It has been found time and again that it is the stirring up of some emotion in the reader which causes them to share a particular piece. Well then, it is necessary that the content is so curated that it awakens an emotion in an individual and urges him to share a content.
The emotions might be positive or negative in nature, but people mostly share content based on their interest, out of curiosity generated by a topic (to know what others think about the topic) or simply in plain amazement. It is also necessary that one uses trigger words to draw out emotions. It has been found that these trigger words can create powerful emotions in readers and thus help in creating powerful content to attract your readers.
3. Make it easy for readers to share, take action
Most blogs overlook the most obvious action, that of prominently and conveniently displaying the sharing button.There are umpteen options available including popular Wordpress options.The buttons need to be displayed prominently at the beginning and end of the article simply because this is where most of the sharing happens.You can also have floating buttons available anywhere in the content but do not create too many options as this will only irritate readers.
Also keep your ultimate purpose in mind. If your website is looking at sales conversions, then an increase in the sharing options might negatively hit your conversion rate. So keep the balance.
4. Don't be afraid to ask for shares
Research shows that sharing rates improve when people actually ask for it. You could simply add a line at the end of your post and respectfully ask your readers to share the content if they liked it. Add links to any content referred and it is likely that the referrals will return the favour by sharing your content.
Backlinking also add to your SEO rating and is an effective method to featuring on search engine listings.
5. Create videos, infographics and images.
- Pick relevant images and not from stock photos. Read this.
- Add a call to action image.
- Buy a good design or get someone to design images for you which are relevant to your topic.
Customized content displays more effectively on search engine listings. Custom titles and descriptions improve SEO ratings and increase user engagement. You can add meta tags related to your title, images, url and descriptions in the HTML code of your web page.Wordpress plugins help you to do this easily and effectively as they have dedicated spaces where you can enter this information.Adding meta tags and description helps social media platforms to fetch your content better when posted on your social media account.
Don’t forget to use Hashtags(#)in your post. This is another effective method to boost traffic to your content.
One also needs to pay a lot of attention while creating effective headlines which generate enough curiosity for the reader and make him want to read the whole article. When enough curiosity is not created people will not bother reading the article much less share it . This is because they think they know what’s in the article or because they think it is unbelievingly obscure.
7. Have an effective posting schedule.
If you post content at a time when users are not online, most of them will miss your post. Hence it is very important to know when your readers are likely to read your post and share it too.
However, every audience is different and you will need to do your own homework to find out when your readers are most active. Scheduling your posts at this time will ensure that you get a better mindshare from your readers and encourage them to share your content actively.
The social media marketing tips shared above are practical ways to boost the number of social shares that your posts get. Practicing them religiously is a sure fire way to get your content to be shared more frequently and thus proactively get your content in front of a larger audience.
Original blog posted here on: http://www.satejinfotech.in/7-ways-to-get-more-likes-and-shares-on-your-social-media-post/
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