There are very few communities on the web that can sustain themselves without the help of social media. Starting as a blogger in the year 2015 and beyond means that you will have to learn social media inside out, and there is no way around it. One social share on a platform like Twitter and Facebook could lead towards attracting hundreds of new visitors, and not ensuring that your visitors can share your content on social media is nothing but ignorance.
Most bloggers today rely on the content management platform WordPress, and while WordPress does not offer native support (not yet at least) for social sharing, it does offer more than a hundred unique and free social sharing plugins, not to mention at least 50+ that come from premium sources. The variety of ways to share your content on social media is huge, all you need to do is the find the right solution for you. In order to help you improve your social media share count, here is a list of ways to give you a heads up on what works for others the most these days.
1. Publish, then share
The problem that others will run into when it comes to sharing the content on your blog is that they first have to actually find your content. Whilst many external resources provide features for content discovery, the best way to get discovered by new and interested readers is to get the name out all by yourself. It’s a lot of work, yeah, but success isn’t easy, and neither should you assume that after hitting the Publish button that everything will magically arrange itself for you to receive new visitors. Share your content on content syndication sites, social media, and manual link submission sites to get the maximum exposure.
2. Establish your presence
We are moving away from the kind of web that doesn’t share intimate relationships between the blogger and the reader. Why should anyone share your content if they don’t know who you are, what you stand for, and what your true intentions are. Make it easy for readers to recognize your name and your experience, which in turn will give you more credibility and ensure trust in those who will then want to share your content on social media.
3. Expressive content titles
The more specific we are with the kind of content titles we are using, the easier it will be for your readers to understand what the content is going to be about, and essentially that will lead towards a much easier decision as to whether the reader wants to share this content or not. The science behind the matter is that the more creative and insightful our content is, the more appealing it will be to our readers and the friends of our readers. Everyone likes to share breaking news stories, or new findings in science… use that insight to craft the kind of content titles that will lure people in organically, rather than on the basis of unseen content value.
[bctt tweet=”The more creative and insightful our content is, the more appealing it will be to our readers.” username=”hostgator”]
4. Visualize your content
Bland content without any visuals is starting to become less and less appealing, and more content creators are starting to incorporate and maximize the use of visual imagery within the actual content, whether to explain ideas or to convey concepts — good quality visual images can be an incredible boost your social shares counts, not only because it’s easier and quicker to learn from visual content, but also because it looks good and is truly convenient for anyone to consume.
5. Remember the share buttons
Today we have a ton of ways to display social share buttons. Floating share widgets, simple sticky widgets, standalone buttons that we can display using shortcodes, underpopups and popups that present visitors with a multitude of ways to share your content. And what a shame at those bloggers who totally forget to implement a social sharing solution at all. If you want your share count to go up, make it easy and accessible for anyone to share your content, whether they are browsing from the web or a mobile device.