Having a viral content is every marketer’s and blogger’s dream. It gives you and your brand exposure on a whole new level. However, even the best marketers couldn’t guarantee their content can go viral.
Social media traffic has grown over time and has become part of the social marketing strategy. It could broaden your reach and improve your search rankings.
So how do you get people to share your content on social media sites?
Here are 9 ways you can get people to share your content.
1. Write What People Want to Read
People LOVE sharing content on their social media that make them look better or useful to them.
If you’re not sure what topic to write, head over to Buzzsumo and enter your keyword to get a list of the most popular content on that topic.
For example, when you typed “keto diet”, you could see what type of content has a higher chance of getting shares.
Brian Dean from Backlinko wrote a detailed Buzzsumo guide with interesting case studies, don’t forget to check it out.
2. Use the Listicle Format
A listicle is an article made of a list, it’s been used by many publishers such as Buzzfeed, Huff Post, Jeff Bullas and many more.
Some examples of listicles are:
- 5 Things You’re Doing 100 Percent Totally Exactly Right
- 4 Smart Ways to Give Your Blog Content a Spring Clean
The listicle is a popular format because they are great to read — you know exactly what you’re going to get and whether the article will be useful to you.
That’s also why based on a study by Buzzsumo, apart from the infographic, list type article gets most shared compared to other content types.
3. Add Relevant Visual
Have you ever heard marketing experts said compelling images increase your engagement?
If you think it only applies to ads or social posts, think again.
According to the study conducted by Buzzsumo — after analyzing social share counts of over 100 million articles, on average, twice as many people share posts with at least 1 image in the post.
Not sure where to find free stock photos for your post? Here are a few of my favorite websites that provide free stock photos you can use:
4. Check Your Social Media Preview
If you’re like me, you probably spent most of your time writing your best post ever and you don’t spend too much time — or maybe none at all — checking how your site looks like on social media.
Don’t be surprised if your article looks like this on Facebook.
I created OpenGraph to help me check and analyze how social media preview and display my website. With this tool, I could quickly edit the meta tags information and see how it looks like right away.
You should implement Open Graph tags for your article if you haven’t done so.
An article that implements Facebook preview received 3 times more shares compared to an article that doesn’t.
5. Use Relevant Social Preview Image
When people share your website, social media like Facebook or Pinterest will search for any images and display it on your post.
Most of the time, the images aren’t optimized which lower the chances of people visiting your website. Like this example.
You could use a tool like Canva to create a different set of images for your post optimized for different platforms — Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.
Or if you prefer an automated solution, do check out BannerBear. It automatically builds preview images for social media based on the templates or designs you chose. Click here to sign up for BannerBear free plan. Note: If you signed up via my referral link, you’ll get some free credits.
Social sharing plugins such as Social Warfare lets you set a different image for different social media sites as each of these sites to have its own preferred dimensions — making it easy to set a Pinterest-optimized image for your post.
You should install social sharing buttons on your website to make it easy for your readers to share your article.
If you’re using WordPress, I suggest you set up Social Warfare plugin. It’s one of the best social sharing plugins and it has a nice feature called Click To Tweet.
With Click to tweet, you could insert a tweetable quote anywhere on your post that’s relevant to your content — making it super easy to share your content on Twitter.
Like this.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”9 Actionable Tips to Get People to Share Your Content” quote=”9 Actionable Tips to Get People to Share Your Content”]
You might think that adding social sharing buttons on your post is enough but sometimes people just need a little bit push.
What did I mean by that? A call-to-action!
Ask your audience to share your content at the end of your post. Even a simple call to action like “if you like this post, share it on Facebook or Twitter!” increases the likelihood people will share your content.
8. Leverage on Social Proof
Social proof is a powerful methodology that could increase the chances of people sharing your article if done properly.
Looking at the images below, what are the changes people would share in this article? Negative social proof. A low social share count would make people think the article isn’t good enough or worst — not worth sharing.
Now, what about this one?
A great example of crowd social proof or the herd mentality — how people can be influenced by others to share your article.
Now that you know the difference, you need to avoid negative social proof. Use plugin such as Social Warfare that lets you hide the social share counts until you hit a minimum count.
9. Automate Your Sharing Process
Sharing your content on social media is an easy yet time-consuming process, you’ll want to free up as much time as you possibly could so you could focus on writing your content.
This is where the social media automation tool comes in handy.
I’ve been using Buffer for over a year as the tool is quite easy to use and it has a free plan that lets you set up 3 social accounts and schedule 10 posts.
Another tool that’s highly recommended is CoSchedule. It lets you schedule your post on different social media platforms easily and you could schedule over 60 posts at once.
If you’re working on a team, CoSchedule is a better option as the pricing is pretty flexible.
Final Thoughts
Creating viral content is no easy task even for seasoned marketers. You should always aim at delivering high-quality content to your audiences.
You should consider these 9 tips when writing your next article to get more social shares.
If you like this article, don’t forget to share it on Facebook or Twitter!
Do you have any other tips to make people share your content? Leave a comment below.
