7 Tips for Shareable Social Content
One of the biggest common goals of using social media is generating brand awareness and getting your content out to a larger audience. To achieve this, you need people to share your posts with their own networks of users. But how often do you stop and think about how shareable your blog post, Facebook update, or Tweet really is? Is your content ready to be easily shared across social networks, or are you unknowingly creating hurdles for those who are ready and willing to share? If you’re hoping for your content to be shared, as I’m sure we all are, then make it easy! Follow these tips when creating and sharing original content to make that content more likely to take off on social media.
1. Make your title relevant
We don’t recommend shoving a bunch of buzzworthy keywords in your title just for kicks, but if your blog post (or other piece of content) is about something relevant to your industry, make sure you don’t omit those keywords from your title. Put them front and center so that it’s clear what your post is about.
2. Go visual
If you only choose one new tactic to try to increase your sharability on social networks, this is the one to run with. It seems like every day I see new studies or statistics saying that visual content is far more likely to be shared than your average text block. Start by always including a photo with your blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn posts, and then expand to including images in your Tweets or even creating visual blog posts or original infographics.
3. Keep it concise
Extra-long titles and links make sharing more difficult. Ideally, for Twitter, your post title (or general Tweet) plus your link should still leave room for a follower to share your Tweet and add a few words of their own commentary.
4. Use hashtags when it makes sense
No one likes an overflow of hashtags, but they can be helpful in getting your content seen by a larger audience. Many people search for Tweets by a hashtag instead of just viewing their own Twitter feed, which means that with the right hashtag for your industry, you may be attracting a larger audience that is already interested in content like yours. Be sparing with hashtags and only use them when it is relevant to what you are posting.
5. Make the (actual) sharing easy
A retweet on Twitter is simple enough, but if your blog doesn’t have buttons for social sharing, readers are going to have to open Twitter (or any other social network), type in the full title of your post, and copy and paste the link before sending that Tweet on its merry way. That’s a lot of work. Social sharing buttons make sharing as easy as a couple clicks, removing the effort from the process and making readers a lot more likely to share.
6. Create digestible content
People who are most active on social media are busy and won’t often have time to sit down and read through a 1,500 word blog post from beginning to end. That takes some focus and dedication. Go easy on your audience by breaking down your content into smaller points or even separate posts so that readers can quickly get the information they’re looking for. Visual content, how-to posts, or content that suggests a few tips on a topic are all easily digestible, and therefore, more easily shareable.
7. Help your audience
What does your audience need help with? What are the pain points that they face on a day-to-day basis? Think about creating content that helps address these concerns that your audience might have. Take an industry problem and turn it into something shareable by giving valuable advice or relevant information on the topic. If a reader finds your content genuinely helpful, the chances of that reader sharing the content go way up.
By eliminating any hurdles that your audience may have in sharing your content, you might notice an upswing in the amount of people who are willing to share your content with others on social media. Combine quality original content with some of these tips and you’ll be on your way to creating shareable content.
– Kelly