Five Tips for Making your Content More Socially Shareable

This issue was written by a guest contributor, Joe Fylan. Thanks to Joe!

Now that you’ve got started on developing a content creation strategy and understood the importance of letting your personality shine through in your writing, it’s time to take a look at making your content more socially shareable amongst your readers.

Make it easy to share

This might seem obvious upon reflection, but it’s surprising how often it gets overlooked. If you want to increase the number of times your content gets shared on the most popular social networks, you need to remove as many hurdles as possible. By adding well positioned and highly visible social sharing buttons to your website, you not only allow you readers to share your content with their peers, by simply clicking a button, but you also provide a visual reminder for them to do so. Thankfully WordPress users have many free plugins to choose from that take care of this for you.

Say something of value

The key to writing engaging content that resonates with your readers is to ensure you always say something of value. Salesy content, extoling the virtues of your business or services won’t inspire anyone to click on a share button. But by solving a genuine problem or by divulging truly useful information, your readers will be more compelled to share that content, in order to help out their network of friends and followers.

Target specific social networks

While just about any type of content is well suited to be shared on Facebook or Google+, Twitter users love to share quotes, while photos and images have a natural home on Pinterest. By including short Twitter-friendly quotes or captions, preferably accompanied by a click to Tweet button, you can provide content that specifically targets users of that network, giving them something unique to add to their timeline.

Be the first to share

While you should always be looking for ways to encourage your site visitors to share your content socially, you also want your fans, friends and followers on the various social networks to share your content. To do so, make sure you are the first to share any new content you publish. By promoting it socially, you not only have a way to entice people to your site, but you also allow your followers to easily share and re-broadcast your message, without ever having to visit your site.

End with a request

When the body of your latest piece of content draws to a close, it’s vital to end it with a rousing call to action. Hopefully you’ve engaged with your readers, so don’t just leave them there hanging, ask them to do something. It might be to check out the sales page on your website, or it could be to share your content on their social network of choice. It’s up to you to decide what the most appropriate action is, but don’t let that goodwill go to waste by failing to provide a little guidance.

With these five tips to follow when publishing new content, your social media marketing efforts should get off to a flying start. Don’t forget to share this article with anyone who you think will find it useful.