Marc Guberti
One of the two key components to a blog’s success is how many people get to see your content, and if you get numerous people to share your blog posts, more people will see your content. Social sharing is massively important because billions of people are on social media. In addition, whether the people who share your blog post have 100 followers or thousands of followers, they all have audiences.
Since all of these people have audiences, more people will be exposed to your content. Then, with more people seeing your content, it is possible for even more people to share your blog posts on their social networks. As a result, the cycle continues, and numerous people are sharing your blog posts.
In order to get there, you need the traffic, but you also need to prepare your blog for success. Implementing these five methods will make it easier for people to share your content so it reaches more people.
#1: Include social media icons at the bottom of your blog posts
There are millions of blogs with social sharing buttons at the bottom of every blog post. One of the reasons why these social sharing buttons are at the bottom of every blog post is because it gives the reader enough time to read through the entire blog post. If the reader enjoys reading your blog post and is then presented with the ability to share your content, that reader will be more likely to do so.
There are some bloggers who place their social sharing buttons at the top of every blog post instead of at the bottom. This is a strategy that will make readers remember that they can share your article at any point. However, some people may forget by the time they read the entire blog post, and then no social sharing buttons will be available.
My recommendation is to place the social media icons at the bottom of your blog posts, but putting them on the top or bottom both have their own set of advantages and disadvantages.
#2: Use Click To Tweet in your blog posts
I experimented with one of my blog posts by making all of the tips 140 characters or less which made each tip short enough to be tweeted. Ever since I published that blog post, numerous people have been tweeting that particular blog post using the custom tweets that I create with Click To Tweet.
The advantage of Click To Tweet is that you get to create a custom tweet with the proper heading and URL. That means your readers do not have to go through the trouble of thinking what to say when they promote your content.
Just to give you an idea, here is an example of Click To Tweet in action for this article. The tweet is prewritten, and you can include a shortened URL in the tweet as well. There are more people who use Bitly and other link shortening service to reduce the amount of characters in a tweet to get more characters. Some people do not like tweeting the long links of other people’s articles, but by using Click To Tweet and already having the shortened URL in the tweet, more people will send it out.
#3: Make sure people can pin your images just by clicking on them
Pinterest is a big player on social media, and in order to spread on Pinterest, you must have pictures in all of your blog posts. Having pictures is not optional for spreading on Pinterest because every Pinterest pin requires a picture. The importance of Pinterest is one of the reasons why I spend more time nowadays creating my own pictures.
One great method to get more people to share your pictures, and therefore your blog, on Pinterest is by allowing people to pin a picture just by clicking on it. There are millions of websites that now make it possible to pin an article just by clicking on the picture. If you go back to the picture in this blog post, you will notice a “Pin It” button that appears faintly enough to be seen but not be too distracting.
You may be wondering whether Pinterest is really worth it, especially if you do not have a large audience on Pinterest yet. Including this feature gives other people the ability to share your content to their audiences on Pinterest. That means you may only have 100 followers, but one of the people who pins your blog post may have 10,000 followers. That is a lot of extra exposure just for adding a “Pin It” button on all of your pictures.
I use the Pin It Button For Images WordPress plugin to get the “Pin It” button to appear. Pinterest is gradually making it easier for anyone to pin something just by clicking on the picture, but this is a powerful feature that you want to make sure you have on your blog now.
#4: Share your blog posts on your own social networks
The main benefit seen with sharing your blog posts on your social networks is that you will get more traffic. Whether that means 1 new visitor, 10 new visitors, or something higher, sharing your blog posts on your own social networks results in more traffic.
Sharing your blog posts on social media is also a great way to spread on the social networks you share them on. If someone retweets your blog post, more people are seeing it. Some of the people who retweet your tweets may have over 10,000 followers. That is extra exposure that may result in more retweets and visitors as well.
It is great to get other people to promote your content on social media, but you also want to build a big presence for yourself on social media. Building a bigger presence for yourself on social media will allow you to boost your credibility, build strong connections, and achieve the main goal referenced in this blog post: get more people to share your content on social media.
#5: Decrease your blog’s bounce rate so people stick around
Just because you get a lot of people to view your blog posts does not guarantee that people share them. In order to boost the chances of someone sharing one of your blog posts, you need these people to stay on your blog for a long period of time. Someone staying on your blog for a long period of time indicates that the person enjoys reading through your content. The people who enjoy your content are the ones who will become returning visitors and let their followers know about your content dozens of times.
I have been thanking people again and again for sharing for sharing my blog posts. Some of the people who share my blog posts are new people that I interacted with for the first time while other people have been sharing my blog posts for several months. The reason someone would continue sharing blog posts from the same blog is because they find that blog interesting. Reducing your blog’s bounce rate will make people stay on your blog for a longer period of time, which may lead to more social shares in the long-term.
In Conclusion
The more your content spreads, the more people will be able to see it. As more people see your content, more of them will share it. Spreading on social media works like a chain reaction. If enough people are sharing your content, more people will see and share it.
Some of the people who read and share your blog posts may not be introduced to your blog by one of your social media posts. Instead, someone else who promotes your blog can introduce it to the people in their audience. The more people you get to promote your content, the greater of an impact this strategy has to attracting more audiences to your blog.
Then, with all of the traffic coming in, your blog’s success then comes down to what people do when they visit your blog. Are they subscribing, buying products, and promoting your blog to more people? If your visitors are performing those actions, then you are going to have a very good blogging career.
Do you have a 6th tip for optimizing a blog for optimized sharing?
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