The most effective means of growing your online presence is to have your followers do a lot of the marketing legwork for you. Sharing content is a form of word-of-mouth advertising, and the power of a personal recommendation from one friend to another is undeniable.
But how can you encourage your followers to share your content with their friends and family on social media?
How to Encourage Your Social Media Audience to Share Your Content
What you need is a solid strategy to grab the attention of your followers. Here are a few tips to help you increase your sharing statistics:
Research and post about trending topics
A lot of social networks list “trending topics” that are getting a lot of buzz. You can also use Google’s search trends tools to see if there is a topic of particular interest in a given day, week or month. When you can make a legitimate connection between these topics and your business, posting about them could allow you to benefit from their popularity. Of course, the connection should be natural—if you are stretching to make a connection with trending topics, it will come off poorly for your brand.
Make it easy for readers to share
On your blog and website, you should make it as easy as possible for readers to share your content. Implement social sharing buttons on each web page and blog post. These buttons allow people to share your content on their social network of choice with a single click. This requires much less effort and commitment than copying the URL and pasting it into a status update.
Improve your headlines and meta descriptions
While you should never resort to low-quality, low-effort clickbait, there are still headlines that can contextualize your content and hook your audience. Your meta description is another way to further preview the content at the linked page and garner more interest from people on social media. The more people who click through to your content, the more will share it.
Use visuals
Always attach images to your posts to help them stand out in people’s newsfeeds. Numerous studies have shown that people are far more likely to share visual content, so having images included with your links can give you a boost of viewership and shares. Make sure any image you use is high-resolution and high quality
Know what kind of content is likely to be shared
Certain types of content are more likely to be shared than others. Getting your audience to share your social media content is as simple as figuring out what kind of content is valuable to them. For example, how-to and instructional posts, list posts, “ultimate guide” articles and articles or videos that tell a story about or related to your brand are all types of content that are likely to be shared. It should be helpful, interesting and informative to your target audience.
Need help connecting with your audience and encouraging them to share your social media content? Contact us today to learn more about the ways you can increase the amount of shares you get out of your content and your posts on social media.
How to Encourage Your Social Media Audience to Share Your Content // Conroy Creative Counsel
