How to Increase Social Sharing of Your Web Content
The main drive behind the creation of any piece of web content is the hope that it will be viewed and as many people as possible, but often our tunnel vision for “likes” and comments can make us overlook the true golden standard of social media success – sharing! Making your content as rich and compelling as possible is easier said than done, but there are a few ways that you can optimize your content so you can see a tangible increase in your social sharing. Here are a few tried and true strategies from Adaptive Imagination:
- Optimize your metadata
First and foremost, your posts should be clear and concise to compel readers to share it on friend’s pages, message boards and elsewhere. A good rule of thumb is to create short, snappy titles (under 100 characters) so the entire title can fit into the post, a short blurb to describe the post and place actionable SEO keywords in as well. You can’t control whether or not a user will share a post, but you can make everything as easy and clear-cut as possible for he or she to do so.
- Enhance your images
According to March 2014 research published on eMarketer, photos accounted for 87 percent of content shared from Facebook pages worldwide. Images are far more compelling and ready-made for social sharing, and you can increase the chances that your posts will go far and wide by optimizing each image before posting. Before putting content online, quickly see if there are any issues with the cropping, sizing or format of the images, as well as ensuring that they’re mobile-ready, to enhance their aesthetic appeal.
- Share Incentive
Even with a simple share button posted on each piece of content, your audience will often need some type of incentive to advocate on your brand’s behalf. Social sharing contests that provide rewards for crowd-sourced content is a great step in the right direction, as you want to give your visitors a reason to share your posts. Ultimately, you want your audience to be compelled to share posts not out of blind loyalty to your company, but out of a desire to share new information, experiences and knowledge with their friends and family.
