Social media shares can spread the reach of your blog to a wide audience. If you want to increase your blog’s social media shares, follow this expert advice.
1. Use Facebook Comments on Your Blog
When people read an engaging blog post, they are often inspired to leave a comment. Why not use this desire to comment to promote your blog post on social media? Rather than having an independent commenting system on your page, use Facebook comments to let users leave comments that show up both on your blog and on Facebook. Your readers’ friends will see these comments on their News Feeds, and could be inspired to visit your blog as a result.
Image courtesy of Flickr user Sean MacEntee
2. Make Sharing Easy With Social Sharing Buttons
If you want readers to share your blog posts on social media, you have to make it easy for them to do so. Social sharing buttons allow your readers to share your blog post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest with just a single click. Social media shares can double a page’s traffic overnight if it evokes emotion, as it did in this Dubli page after adding social shares.
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Image courtesy of Flickr user Judy O’Connell
3. Mention Social Media Influencers in Your Posts
Mentioning other bloggers or brands in your posts is a good way to make them notice you. If a big name in your niche has released an interesting report, or written a particularly impressive blog post, you can mention it in your own blog. Share your post with the person or brand that you mentioned – they may respond by sharing the post with their own followers.
You need to be slightly careful with this approach. It is not good enough simply to repeat what another blogger wrote – you need to add your own interpretation or angle on the issue. For example, using data published by another brand to create infographics is a way of adding value to the original content.
Image courtesy of Smarnad at reeDigitalPhotos.net
4. Use Images to Attract Pinterest Shares
Pictures are worth more than words when it comes to boosting blog shares. Including a high-resolution, attractive image with your post makes it much more shareable on Pinterest. Even on Facebook, the first thing many users notice when shared posts appear in their News Feed is the image that accompanies the headline. This image needs to be eye-catching or intriguing to catch these users’ attention and persuade them to read – and perhaps share – the post.
Image courtesy of Flickr user mkhmarketing
5. Make it Easy for Tweeters to Quote You
Twitter is all about pithy quotes that can be expressed in 140 characters or less. Make it easy for your readers to quote you on Twitter by using a tool like Highlighter. This tool allows readers to highlight a line from your article and share it on Twitter or Facebook, along with a link to your article. This is just one way to facilitate conversation centered around your content, which should be your aim if you want your brand to become highly visible on social media. Top Ten Reviews’ web hosting page made these clear, call-to-tweet actions on their articles, helping them double their Twitter engagement.
Image courtesy of Flickr user photosteve101
6. If All Else Fails… Try a Bribe
Sometimes, you have to resort to good old fashioned bargaining to get users to share your content. Once you have created popular content that readers want, you can use it as a bargaining chip to buy yourself some social media shares.
Starting a blog is hard enough as it is, utilize the power of networking by incentivizing your readers with enticing giveaways.
The most effective way to use your content in this way is to allow everyone to read the introduction to an article, but restrict access to the rest of the content to people who share the post on a major social network. The Social Locker plugin for WordPress is one way to achieve this. Be warned – your introduction must be strong enough to convince people to want to read on.
Image by WordPress, via Wikimedia Commons
You can also give a free gift in exchange for each social media share. This could be entry into a contest or a discount coupon for use in your online store, if you have one.
Header image courtesy of Flickr user Mathias Pastwa
