4 TIPS TO INCREASE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SHARES


Gaining more social shares for your content means gaining a wider range of audiences. By making a few adjustments to how you create, publish, and post your content, you can increase the likelihood that others will share it more often.

Here’s how you do it:

  1. Research Trending Topics
    It pays to do your research ahead of time. Having a better understanding of what successful content looks like in your industry increases the likelihood of it being shared. Use a tool like BuzzSumo to help identify top shared content. You can search for top shared content pertaining to a topic or keyword, with results sorted by overall shares. Alternatively, you can search by domain to view top shared content specific to a website. You get a comprehensive breakdown of shares per social network, which helps you decide where to focus your efforts.
  2. Make Sharing Easy for Blog Visitors
    Your audience is more likely to share content when it takes minimal effort. If your website already receives regular traffic, take advantage of the potential social shares by designing your most popular content for easy sharing.

An effective approach is to implement social buttons on your website. If you operate a WordPress site, there’s plenty of useful plugins for one-click sharing buttons, including Social Pug. The way your content reads can also encourage social engagement. Have a great tip to share in an article? Post a share button directly below your article.

  1. Provide Context in Headlines
    There’s a strong chance your content is being snubbed if your headline fails to grab people. It becomes increasingly important to hook your audience with a headline, as online attention spans continue to dwindle. Social audiences tend to favor snackable content; bite-sized pieces that quickly convey their intent.

BuzzFeed articles are essentially engineered to take advantage of this trend: easily consumed and shared. They further entice the audience to read the content by addressing them individually. For example, you’ll encounter dozens of instances of “you” and “your” throughout. Want your best content to receive more shares across social networks? Start thinking about your headlines in a social context.

  1. Capitalize on Visual Interest
    Attach images to your posts to help them stand out and benefit your social efforts. Invest resources in quality images to maximize post visibility. Some stock photo sources are free to use, provided you meet the terms of their licensing agreement. While stock photos provide an option, you may prefer to create custom images that better showcase your brand. Don’t have a graphic designer on hand? Use tools like Canva to create images to accompany your post. You can choose from premade templates that can easily be customized with text. It’s perfect for adding taglines that complement your attention-grabbing headlines.

One more tip? Posting during peak hours greatly enhances your ability to attract shares and other meaningful engagement. You’ll want to experiment with your own content to find out what works best for your business.

In conclusion, you’ll need to put in the effort to create the type of content people want to share. With great material in place, you can leverage creative opportunities to promote it and generate more exposure.