Sometimes it gets too tough to get more than a 100 honest shares (you can get 500 by spamming in Facebook groups but it is of no value) for bloggers. While more shares are important for social proof and also showing authority many of my readers have been struggling with low share counts.
Check this post and see how easy it is to get your content shared on facebook and other social networks automatically. It helps in content promotion.
If you are one amongst the former type and want more shares on your blog post, I have listed 11 innovative ways to get more shares from your blog posts.1) Make your social share buttons prominent and fast loading
We all use social sharing plugins on our blog posts but most of the time our audience starts developing blindness for it. It means though they see the plugin and social buttons they ignore it as they are used to see it for long.
Secondly, when our plugins tend to load a bit slower and it does not serve its purpose. I know that no one shares a blog post as soon as loading the page instead they start reading it and then share.
But, whenever a reader opens a page and soon after he sees that it has got some over 200 shares he is influenced by the social proof. He wants to share it to his network as he thinks that if 200 people have already shared it must be substance.
TIPS:
a) Make your social plugins floating:
You can use free digg digg social sharing plugin for this purpose. Or try an even more advanced and customizable monarch plugin.
b) Make the buttons a contrast:
Do not choose something that matches your theme’s color scheme. They might not catch attention. Here are two occasions just see how the share buttons get lost amidst same color scheme of the post in image 1 and see how the share buttons stand out in image 2.
Image 1
Image 2
c) If possible use a call to action
2) Want them to share it? Make it easy for them:
Believe it or not, most readers have a busy routine and some are too lazy to click and share something on a new tab. If you want them to share it, why not serve it on their plate ready to eat?
TIPS:
a) Make images easy to share:
You can use the shareaholic plugin or the monarch plugin to add a pin it button to your images that become visible only on hover. This will catch the attention of the reader and they also can share their desired images to Pinterest.
Monarch makes it even easier by including social share buttons to all (as per your wish) social channels in the image.
b) Include Tweet-able bytes at the end of the post and in between posts:
Why not give your readers readymade tweets so that they only have to click “share”? The best advantage of this is that you can decide what you want the readers to share. Try to include hashtags and other details as you wish.
You can do it by using a free service called click to tweet. The best thing about it is that they allow you to track your tweet shares along with click on the links in the tweets.
For example:
Tweetables:
3) Get influencers share your posts:- 11 Tips to get more social shares easily [Click To Tweet]
- Discover 11 ways to increase your social shares [Click To Tweet]
This is probably the most working method to get more shares and that too from high authority social accounts. What you have to do is:
- Create a spreadsheet of all the influential people in your niche. You could judge it by checking their klout score or simply by their follower count. List their social profile URLs too along with their contact form details.
- Write the topics they speak and share stuff about.
- Write high-quality content – an epic post that might match the standard of posts they tweet or share. If possible quote a previous work of them.
- Go to the spreadsheet and click on the contact form and then mail them saying you have a post that might interest their audience. (Don’t forget to notify if you have given them a backlink).
- If you don’t have their work email, contact them via twitter. Most of them will respond and share your post.
Group interviews are something that give you lot of backlinks, tons of exposure and guess what, loads of shares too. How?
When you conduct a group round up post, the participants (who are experts) will share them for sure. Their audience and followers re-share them as loyalty or due to the value of the post.
Again the readers that funnel to your blog through their shares also share the post after reading. This way you have boosted your blog post shares manifold.
Let’s calculate: Suppose you conducted an expert round up of 56 bloggers. They share it to their networks of possibly 10,000 (I know they have more followers but let’s be humble!) followers that means total of 56,000 followers.
If 5% of those followers re-share the post you have 2800 shares.
I leave the shares you get by the visits these original shares produce to your imagination. At least you can guarantee you get 2800 shares without even writing the content. Have a look at my expert round-up post and notice the total number of social shares and comments there. Click here to read it.
5) Become an expert in writing posts that demand to be shared:
A recent research, by studying about 220,000 articles, states that the following types of blog posts get more shares:
- ‘List’ posts and ‘why’ posts get on an average about 21,000 shares per month. Now this is something your next blog post should be themed around.
- ‘Video’ posts got an average of 18.94% of the total shares.
- ‘What’ posts were too unpredictable and performed the lowest.
TIP: I would also add here that though this study can be definitive, it’s after all, your blog and your audience. You should conduct experiments to see what type of posts perform the best for you.
6) Leverage email marketing for that huge sharing count for your posts
Email marketing is something you should start right now (even without completing this article, because it’s that important).
The idea here is, send personalized emails to your subscribers each time you publish a new post. This will boost your reader count and ultimately shares.
Again, not many readers have so much free time to open up the web version. So, include some popular share buttons like Facebook, twitter etc. in that newsletter itself so that the reader doesn’t have to read the article to share it.
7) Write on trending topics:
When a current topic is going popular, try to funnel out its popularity to get you more social shares. When you write about a topic that has just broken out or happened more people will read and share your stuff to let others know.
Don’t think that you are late a few hours and an authority site has already written it.
Always remember, it’s never too late.
The next technique is all about trading:
8) Trade your content for a share:
Yes, if you are on WordPress you could use various content locker plugins that hide your content and unlock it only when your readers share the post to any of the selected social channel.
You can use social locker plugin for this.
9) Share other blogger’s posts:
Our earth runs on give and take principle. You should be giving and helping if you want others to help you. Share other blogger’s posts, visit them and share to your audience.
Here is the hack:
If you don’t find time to share everyone’s posts you can join sites like triberr where you can form a community of bloggers and put their posts to be automatically be shared to your networks even when you haven’t read them.
Alternatively, you could use tweetadder to add your friend’s RSS feed URL so that is gets shared automatically to your twitter profile.
Next on is a technique we learnt at pre-school.
10) Be grateful:
Being grateful to everyone who shares your post will make them feel appreciated and they will be encouraged to further share your posts and also be your loyal readers.
Just pass a thank you message to everyone who tweets or share your posts on their profiles.
A bonus? Why not!
11) Join sites that have members to share your content:
Have you heard of viralcontentbuzz? If not, it’s a platform where you get influencers to share your content. What you have to do is share other’s stuff and gain points and re-invest these points in your projects for others to share.
If you don’t have time (trust me it takes only a couple of minutes) to share and earn points you can buy points from them.
Concluding: What’s next on the road to more shares?
In order to get more shares you need to take every care that your audience is comfortable and proud to do it. Here are some final takeaways and tasks to perform on the road to getting more social shares.
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