8 Ways to Improve Social Shares for Your Blog
Are you looking for tools to optimize blog posts for sharing?
When website visitors share your content, you get more views which leads to more visibility and engagement.
In this article I’ll share eight ways to optimize your blog content for sharing and tools to help you.
Discover 8 ways to improve social shares for your blog.
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#1: Add Meta Data
Make things as easy as possible for those who want to share your blog content. Provide meta details as part of your post. Then, when someone shares your content to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+, it will be displayed in the best possible way on each channel.
Know.em has a tool for checking to see if pages on your site are optimized correctly for sharing on social media.
Enter in the website address of your blog post and it will give you a rating out of 100% for each of the social networks.
Input your blog URL on Know.em to check if it’s optimized for all social networks. The goal is to get a 100% rating across all platforms.
Optimize your blog posts for SEO and social, so they show up properly when shared.
#2: Make Image Sharing Easy
Create engaging images for your posts and then encourage your website visitors to share them.
Among other functionalities, SumoMe allows you to put social sharing icons on images. Therefore, when someone hovers over an image in your blog post, they will see an option to share on Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter.
Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter sharing icons are displayed on the image, courtesy of SumoMe.
Click on any of the buttons, and the post is ready to share.
Add SumoMe buttons to make images and their content easy to share.
This functionality makes it easy for others to share images to their social platforms.
#3: Optimize for Mobile
If you check your analytics, you’ll probably find that at least 20% of your traffic comes from a mobile device.
Optimize for mobile sharing, so your fans can share on the go.
SumoMe’s share bar allows people to post your content across many channels. When a visitor browses your blog content on a mobile device, a share bar appears across the bottom of the screen. This makes it very obvious and easy to share.
SumoMe makes it simple to share content on a mobile device.
Access your site on your mobile device to see how easy or difficult it is to share content. Then make adjustments so your mobile sharing is more user-friendly.
#4: Create Tweetable Snippets
Add ClickToTweet links to your site, so your visitors can effortlessly share your content via Twitter.
Sign in, authorize the app and create a simple tweet: a title, quote, stat or question in the text, along with the article link. Then add the ClickToTweet link to text (or link with Twitter image) to the post. Then when someone is reading the article and is inspired to send it to his or her network, they’ll click to share your pre-populated tweet.
For example, in a recent article, Post Planner listed 50 SEO experts with a ClickToTweet link under each expert’s details.
Post Planner inserted a customized Click to Tweet clickable link underneath each SEO expert in an article.
Each tweet had customized text and a link to the article.
Select the ClickToTweet link, and a pre-populated tweet automatically appears.
Pre-populate tweets to make it easy for website visitors to share content from your blog post via Twitter.
#5: Experiment With Titles
The titles of your blog posts have a huge bearing on the number of shares they get.
To write compelling titles that will strongly encourage people to click on your post, here are some tools worth trying:
- Emotional Headline Analyzer helps evaluate if your title is going to appeal to the emotions of your website visitors. Enter your proposed title and it will give you a rating out of 100%. Tweak the title until you get a higher score.
Use Emotional Headline Analyzer to see how effective your title is. Alter it until you get a higher percentage.
- Social Warfare allows you specify the text that’s shared (different than the article title), when a visitor clicks the Tweet button. The title you use in your post may not be the perfect title for Twitter.
- BuzzSumo is a content research tool. Enter the name of your (or your competitor’s) website to find out which content has the most shares. This will give you good insight into the type of posts/titles that get the most attention.
When someone shares your content on any of the social media channels, the title is one of the key things that will entice them to click on it and read more. Make it good.
#6: Reshare Content
After you create a new piece of content, come up with a schedule to share it several times, so more of your audience sees it.
It’s highly unlikely that 100% of your audience is online when you share a blog post, especially on a platform like Twitter, so the majority of your followers probably won’t see it.
Buffer features a scheduler, which allows you to specify when you want to send out your content and on what channels. For example, share your blog post to Twitter when it goes live, then again in 8 hours, a day, a week and some custom time in the future. Also, vary your timing when you share posts to other channels.
Share your posts more than once on multiple channels. It’s easy to do when you use tools like Buffer’s scheduler.
To optimize the visibility of your content, come up with a strategy that takes into account sharing the post on multiple channels at a variety of times.
#7: Find the Right Posting Times
The best time to post content depends on multiple factors: the industry, the type of people you’re targeting, the type of content and more.
A lot of it comes down to trial and error. Use tools such as Buffer to schedule content for a variety of times. Then look at the analytics to see which times got the best engagement and activity.
Another option is SocialBro, which shows you the times of the day your audience is on Twitter. Note: you may not want to target your audience when most of them could be online, as it could be the busiest and most competitive time to share content.
SocialBro shows when your Twitter followers are online, so you know when it’s the best time to tweet. Beware though—your competitors will think it’s the best time to tweet, too.
Also, review social network analytics such as Facebook Insights. This will show you what you post, when you post and the Facebook reach/interaction on all of them.
There are so many variables to consider when determining when to post, which is why it’s so difficult to get a definitive answer. Test different days and times to see what works best for your business.
#8: Post to Online Communities
After you post content, reach out to other online communities that may be interested in what you have to say. This could generate traffic, which will lead to shares.
For example, Scoop.it is a content curation platform where people create boards of content and other people can follow those boards. If you’re an active member of Scoop.it, people will start following your boards and will share your content to different social channels. This will lead to greater visibility and potentially more shares.
Don’t just join a bunch of communities and share content. You need to be an active member. Just pick out the most relevant communities and interact with others in an organic way.
Summary
When you have great content, you want the most visibility.
Encourage your website visitors to share your content. This leads to more website visitors, which leads to more sharing. Use these strategies to get to your audience and give them the tools to make sharing as easy as possible.
What do you think? What strategies do you use to increase social sharing? What tools or apps do you implement? Do you have any tips for optimizing blog content sharing? Please let us know your recommendations in the comments.
