Many bloggers out there may be writing great content but receive very little appreciation by the number of social shares.
Why?
That is the big question.
Even when there’s a steady stream of readers connected to the RSS feed
or even though the content has numerous visits, you still do not have a
clear guarantee that it will be shared by viewers. Here, we will be
learning guaranteed ways to make your content more shareable.
10 Tips to Make Your Content More Shareable
1. Engage with fans in social media
In Facebook, it’s not enough that you share your posts and invite more
people to like your page. Sure, you gain readership but you don’t
necessarily win free “viral marketing” if these fans do not share them
with their network. What you need to do then is to build relationship
with these people by engaging with them in social media. For instance,
in Facebook, aside from your regular updates, you should be able to
encourage them to post a comment, like your post and don’t forget to
return comments by posting responses as well.
2. Earn audience’s trust
People should not view your accounts as those being run by a robot or
machine. You should be able to show your personal side and earn the
reader’s trust by establishing a unique voice. In your field, your site
and content should be marked as “trustworthy” in all occasions. To help
you achieve this, an example you can do is to have other people post
reviews about your site and share them with others.
3. Cater to sharing people
There are two types of readers. One is the type who reads a lot and
appreciates it by saving the page as a bookmark stored only in his or
her web browser. This is the type who will save it only for own use and
reference. The other one is the type who would share the content to
others. The one you should target is the latter. It would be rather
wasteful if you’d exert your effort only to enthusiasts who does nothing
but collect information. Instead, you should watch out for people who
would recommend content. You can hunt for this type of people also in
social media and forums.
4. Write to one person
You cannot serve several masters. If you want your content to be shared,
you should have loyalty to your reader. If you think that your content
caters to baby boomers who are vacation houses to retire, focus on that
and don’t change the subject. Address this audience and use
conversational tone in your writing.
5. Write actionable content
Readers want answers but writing your content should not only be
providing answers through text but providing answers by call-to-action
buttons and links. At the end of each post, place links that would link
them to another page and social sharing buttons that will trigger
sharing of content. The key is to entertain but at the same time, learn
how to empower them to convey your message to others. Adding links that
are relevant to their concern will further boost their education so they
might share this page as it contains the list of references their
network might be able to find interesting.
6. Present infographics
Nowadays, there are free tools you can use to create your own
infographics. These can fulfill part of evidence in your work. By
presenting data through graphics combined with quotes, results of
researches and statistics, your content will have a higher edge against
competitors who only provide textual content.
7. Offer giveaways every now and then
People would be willing to join giveaways as they love to receive
exciting prizes. So you can create mini contests where the requirements
to take home the prize is to share your content, like your page,
recommend your site, and so on. Track the respondents and you can set a
random raffle draw to determine the winner. Give the winner a note
requesting to share the word about the award.
8. Interview experts and post insights
It’s not so often that readers find great insights from interviews with
experts they follow and adore. So if your content makes this a reality,
then you want a great opportunity to be found. When interviewing, choose
questions that you know will mean a lot to your audience and that will
receive likely more shares.
9. Ask for advice
Ask for advice not from experts this time but from your audience. In
your Twitter account, you may send a tweet asking for tips from
followers. Do acknowledge their answers by “retweeting” the most
favorable ones and “favoriting” the most promising feedback. In this
way, they will feel appreciated and they will tend to do the same
way—retweeting your tweets and favoriting them. End result? You will
earn more followers soon.
10. Focus on quality and not quantity
The number of words in your post determines its “share-ability”? Not
exactly true. Let’s take Seth Godin’s blog posts as example. He does not
write lengthy content but makes sure that each one leaves a bang to his
readers every time.
Wrap Up
Make shareable content is not an easy chore as you think it is. You need
practice and determination to keep up. In the long term, when the word
goes around, more will be more willing to do the same and it will come
to full circle.
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