Richard BarkerWhen it comes to your social media marketing effort, increasing your social sharing of the content from your website and blog is paramount to your success. Effective content marketing requires the most number of eyes to see your text, images and video. So, it is important for you to get what makes your business special out to the public, and to be more specific to those who may want your services and/or products.
Following these five tips will help you improve your social sharing ability so that you can maximise your marketing potential.
#1 Optimise Your Meta Data
Meta data is just geek speak for the title and description for your social media posts. Effective content marketing means that your title and description are simple and clear so that readers can fully understand what the post is suppose to convey.
When you have an item shared on Facebook for example, viewers will see the image, title, description and comment from the person who is sharing your post. While you cannot control what the person states in the comments, you can control the image, title and description for maximum effect.
- Titles: 100 Characters
- Description: 250 Characters
You want to stay under the limits in terms of characters so that they will appear on the screen when viewed. Be as short and concise as possible to convey the essence of the post – but use words that are emotive and get a reaction – in this case a click. Try to pretend that you are looking at the post for the first time and see the image, title and description to see if you understand what it says. Get a friend to look at it if you have any doubts. Using keywords are important, but keep in mind you have very little room so make the most out of them while retaining clarity.
ProTip – Use this headline analyser to improve the appeal of your titles to increase clicks and shares – it takes some copywriter superhero to get to 100/100
#2 Use the Proper Sized Images
There is little doubt that images, photos and videos are far more eye-catching to your potential readers than simple text. However, what may look great when viewing your website from your laptop may not be so lovely on a social post. So, you will need to keep in mind that what you share needs to look good when posted on one of your social media pages.
You can do a quick evaluation of every image by simply creating a social post and adding the URL of the page that will be shared. This is a test run to see if what you are offering looks good when shared on a social site. If the image is too large or small or perhaps in the wrong format, you can make the necessary changes before you publish it on your website.
While most images may work, you cannot trust which ones will and won’t based on past experience, simply because every image is going to be a little different.
- If the image is cut off, reduce the overall size
- When in doubt, use square images as they look the best on most social sites
- Check social sites for ideal image size
Once you have checked to see that the image works, the next step is checking the content of your image to see if it looks right. A good, clear photo or image that is the right size should be okay.
However, you’ll want to double-check as you are sizing the image to ensure that its content is coming across clearly.
If not, then you’ll need to make the proper adjustments with a simple photo program that can lighten, darken or alter the content of the image so that it can be seen clearly. It will take some trial and error at first, but the end result should be an image that is clean and clear across all social sites.
ProTip – Here`s a great resource for all social media post image sizes, including the new Instagram ones too.
#3 Use Share Buttons
The essence of social media marketing when it comes to your post is that you want to encourage that it be shared – so if you don`t have social media sharing buttons what are you playing at!
However, you don’t want to pick just any old share button, you’ll want to use those that work the best for your content. For maximum effect, you’ll need to do the following with your share buttons;
- Pick them correctly
- Place them Prominently
- Track the Results
You can look as some of the major sites when it comes to their share buttons to get ideas on where to place them – take a look at ShareThis for an easy way to add social sharing to your sites pages, watch out for increased page speed loading times, the whole point is having a site that loads ultra-quick and doesn’t leave your visitors waiting around for pages to load.
Adding more plugins, if you are using WordPress, can bloat your site so it takes an age to load. Always keep a check on page speed scores to ensure this does not happen.
If you are sharing epic content full of value then I`d suggest using a social sharing locker, this way visitors have to share your content on a social platform in order to get access to the best part of it. It`s a simple way to create more awareness and social signals to your content.
By tracking where the posts are being shared you can then understand your potential readership base even better. This is how social media marketing can really work as you can adjust your strategy over time to better match those who enjoy your posts.
ProTip – Use social media sharing buttons from sites that your customers use, there`s no point using Tumblr unless your customers are there (although it can help a little with SEO Social Signals)
#4 Don’t Just Use The Same Old Social Media Sharing Sites
Tips #1 -3 are basic social media sharing tips, these are things that you should have covered already, but if not then you need to.
With tip #4 I`m going to tell you about some social media sites that you`ve probably not heard of, or didn’t know could help you reach new audiences.
SlideShare – One of the best kept secrets – change your post into a slide and add it there. The site is huge with viral marketing and adds a great link through to your site, which of course helps build your sites authority in the eyes of search engines.
Quora – If you are looking to increase your reputation in your chosen field, an easy win is to simply answer questions. You can also mention that you wrote an article about whatever the question was and link back to your site (which again will build more authority). Here’s The Marketer`s Guide to Quora to tell you the potential for the site.
There is plenty more social sites to publish your content on, but the two above are well worth your time to do. Let me know in the comments below if you have any tips of your own.
#5 Offer More
It is important to understand that a social media post that gets shared a great deal is not based on the social media post, it`s all down to the kind of content you are sharing. In order to pull more people back to your website, you are going to have to put out fresh and high-quality content on a regular basis. In fact, the essence of content marketing is that you give potential customers or visitors a reason to keep coming back – the more value you share the more shares and leads you will gain from content marketing.
This means that you’ll have to give your customers a reason to share your new content once you start building an audience. The good news is that you can actually use a call-to-action in your content that encourages it to be shared. In this manner, you can actually get those who like your post to work for you in a sense and share what you have to the world.
Effective social media marketing starts with creating interesting, useful content that is easy to share with clear images, titles and descriptions. In this manner, you can create a system that will help encourage others to keep sharing the post you have made and check out your website as well.
How are you using social media to amplify your content?
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