7 Tips to Get More Social Shares

by Stuart McHenry September 12, 2013

Having excellent content on your blogs and catchy phrases on your social media sites are what keep your customers coming back for more. However, it’s all meaningless if the content isn’t being seen by anyone. Driving traffic to your sites will be a lot of work but well worth the effort. Here are 7 tips on how to get more social shares.

 

Create a Unique Tag for Your Social Media Posts

 

Having a unique tag line for your social media posts are important for two reasons. First, it gives the reader a quick overview of what the post will be about, other than the general title and URL link. Second, it doesn’t look so auto generated. You want your message to be read by all customers, including your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook followers. These customers are all different and you may need to convey your message different as well.

 

Make Sharing Easy

You want to make it easy to share your content. This means having social plug in’s on your blog for multiple sites. Don’t limit your plug in’s to just the popular sites. Build your online presence to sites that aren’t as popular. For those less than popular sharing sites, place a drop down menu on your content to share there as well. The key is to not leave anyone out.

 

Get Colleagues Involved

 

One mistake that companies make when trying to share their content is that they don’t bring all hands on deck to help share the content. Reach out to your employees to update their email signatures with the latest blog post. Allow a social media hour where employees can go to their social networks to tweet, post, and pin your company’s content and hang out for the rest of the hour. For those individuals you have networked with, be sure to send them the blog post so they can share it with their network. These individuals could have provided you with resourceful information or you have referenced them as an expert in your posts.

 

Provide Other Relevant Content

 

Make sure your blog is about more than just promoting your business. Offer other insightful information that is relevant to your industry. Constantly promoting your business can be a turn off for many customers. Eventually, they feel as though they know exactly what you are going to post about and won’t bother reading it. It’s like having a sales person push the same product.

 

Get Help from Your Email Subscribers

 

Another great way to share your content is to have your social media links on your newsletters that are emailed out. If you don’t have an email list yet, make sure to get that started. Those who sign up are interested in what you have to say. Chances are, they know of at least one person who may be interested and the cycle will continue.

 

Listen then React

 

One part of effective communication is your listening skills. In order to get people sharing and talking about your content, you need to listen to what they want. Pay attention to the feedback you receive about your posts. If you find they are saying they love it, write a few more posts about that subject.

 

Hopefully, you are tracking your clicks and shares on your social media sites. Use those numbers to gage what to produce more content about. There is nothing wrong with friendly competition either. See what your competitors customers are talking about and write on those subjects as well. Give the audience what they want to learn about and they will defiantly share it.

 

Promotions and Incentives

 

Everyone loves deals, contests, and free items. Make sure to place your social media contact information out there for your customers. If you’re having a huge in-store promotion, use make sure those visitors see your ample signage around talking about your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram pages so they can connect with you. Once you start having visitors, start having contests where users share your contest information opening the doors for your contest to be exposed to more people and eventually, shared.

Stuart McHenry
Stuart McHenry is a US-based SEO Consultant focusing on link building, content marketing, local SEO, and reputation management. Follow Stuart on Twitter @smindsrt

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