Social Tech Animal

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, I will  be listing 10 great ways, in no particular order, I have discovered that will make your content more shareable.

1. Engage With Fans In Social Media

Seems like a no brainer right? It may however may involve more than you would think.  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. That's the whole point behind social networking, you want to meet new people online that share the same interests and mindset you you.  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. One thing I have discovered as a social media marketing intern is that sometimes people will have automatic twitter and Facebook updates that are programed to being published throughout the day.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, professional business utilize this feature to provide structure and organization in their marketing campaigns, but it is highly impersonal as it may come off as if you are interacting with a computer instead of people.  In your field, your site and content should be marked as “trustworthy” in all occasions, and if you automate social updates, keep them to a minimum.  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.

Summing it 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.