If you’re looking to increase your social media sharing, you’re gonna love this post.
What if I told you there’s another free untapped source for your traffic — social traffic.
Do you want to learn how to increase social traffic through social media sharing?
In this post, you’re going to learn 13 tips to increase your social media sharing.
Disclaimer: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning if you choose to buy them, I will earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Please know that I have experience with all of the following resources and I recommend them because they are great.
How Do You Increase Social Media Sharing?
To boost social sharing or social traffic to your site, you need to be present on those platforms.
How’s that?
Go and set up your Facebook page, Twitter, and Pinterest account. Make sure on all your social media profiles you have a link pointing back to your site.
It’s that simple.
Setting up these social media profiles give you an advantage over those who don’t. You could grow your audience, have analytic insides to find out what type of content is popular, and start a conversation with your audience. You know, set the ball rolling.
Plugin, such as Social Warfare, makes it easy for you to configure your social account with WordPress. Which gives you even greater advantages. Now, whenever someone tweets your article, your twitter handler will be added. You’ll get notified when your article is shared.
Now that you have your social media account setup and configured, time to add those shiny icons to your website.
There are a couple sections you could add these icons — header, footer, or sidebar. The choice is yours.
WordPress doesn’t come with social media functionality by default, so how do you add social media icons to header or sidebar?
Good thing is — it easy. You could add social media icons to WordPress menu, and display it on header, footer, or sidebar. Again, the choice is yours.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Add social media icon to your blog’s header to increase awareness” quote=”Add social media icon to your blog’s header to increase awareness”]
When someone read content on your site they really like, they might want to share it with their friend or social media followers. Make sure the sharing buttons are there when they need it. Make it easy for them to find it.
If your readers don’t see — or worse, couldn’t find — the sharing buttons cause you hide it well, they won’t bother trying the next time they visited your site.
Whichever social sharing plugins you use, always display the buttons at these locations. Before the content. After the content. Next to the content.
The floating sharing buttons are my favorite.
As you scroll through the content, the sharing buttons are always visible.
You could add social sharing buttons with Social Warfare.
What’s next?
I first encountered a tweetable quote when I visited Brian Dean. As I was reading his article on SEO copywriting (it’s good — you should check it out), I saw this “click-to-tweet” call to action that relates to the content I’m reading. Sure enough, I tweeted it.
Brian has been using this strategy to maximize the number of shares he could get for the post. He added the “click to tweet” call to action beneath each item on his list.
Want to know the best part?
The post received over 2,900 tweets and a good chunk of the tweets came from that simple call to action.
It’s easy to add. Just like this one. Try it yourself.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”13 Easy Ways to Boost Your Social Sharing #bloggers” quote=”Tweet this 13 easy ways to boost your social sharing”]
5. Write a catchy sharable headline
Writing a sharable headline is tough. No matter how good your content is, it won’t gain much traction without a nice catchy headline.
Headlines are the driving force behind people visiting your website. A good headline can boost your click-through rate. A great headline can boost your social sharing.
Won’t it be great if YOU could write a great headline?
Good news:
You don’t have to be great at writing to write great headlines.
You can say that again.
First off, Find out what type of headlines went viral.
Next, leverages on headline analyzers tool to assess your headline. My favorite headline analyzer tools are CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer and Sharethrough. Type in your headline and let them do the job for you.
Try to use a headline that scores above 70 and beyond. For example, “13 Easy Ways to Boost Your Social Media Sharing” scores 78 on Headline Analyzer. Pretty good huh.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer is perfect for creating attractive headlines.” quote=”CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer is perfect for creating attractive headlines.”]
6. Add images
Images improve your content readability. It stops visitors from skimming your content and leave. And it makes your content more shareable.
In a mini study, Buffer analyzes the last 100 tweets sent and compared the engagement rate between tweets that include images and those that didn’t.
- Tweets with images received 18% more clicks
- Tweets with images received 89% more favorites
- Tweets with images received 150% more retweets
Still not convinced?
Whenever you published a post, don’t forget to assign an optimized image to your post. The image will get shown when user shared your content.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Adding images to your post could increase your social engagement.” quote=”Adding images to your post could increase your social engagement.”]
7. Power up your Pinterest game
Pinterest has been a huge source of traffic for many bloggers. And it works for every niche. Lauren McManus, a well-known Pinterest expert from Create and Go, receives hundreds of thousands of visitors from Pinterest monthly.
Think about it this way:
Pinterest is a search engine.
People go to Pinterest to search and find things that interest them or help them. And it all boils down to images. Images play an important part in Pinterest as Pinterest favors tall images — at least 735x1102px. Use a tall image to maximize your Pinterest engagement potential.
The drawback I see in most blogs is you’ll see this huge image — right on the post — which is very distracting to readers.
We’ve all done it.
Unfortunately, most social sharing buttons is it will grab any images off the page and let the Pinner decide which image to pin. So you’ll see something like this.
Don’t worry. There’s a solution.
This is where Social Warfare excels as the best social sharing plugin. With custom sharing options, you could assign a specific Pinterest image and custom-optimized description for your pin.
So you can have something like this.
It couldn’t be easier.
You could also add a Pin It button to your website so your visitors can pin any image that worth sharing. Click here to get Social Warfare and Also, check out these tips to optimize your content for Pinterest and SEO.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Setup custom Pinterest optimized image with Social Warfare.” quote=”Setup custom Pinterest optimized image with Social Warfare.”]
8. Optimized your sharing description
When somebody shares your content on social media, most social sharing buttons will simply grab the title and first paragraph. Your content is sharable — but it’s not optimized.
You should provide a catchy and sharable headline plus optimized description for different media profiles. For example, I like to use a custom tweet for my content and add relevant hashtags.
Social proof is an interesting yet critical factor that affects your social sharing counts. What you need to know is human behaviors are guided by others.
That’s what happens to your content. When someone visited your post and saw your post has been shared hundreds or thousands of times. They will be more inclined to share. That’s the social proof effect.
Yet, it’s not always good. When you show a low social count on your post. You’re telling your visitors that “no one is sharing my content”, and guess what — people won’t share your content. It’s advisable to show no social count than low social count.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Displaying no social count is better than display low social count.” quote=”Displaying no social count is better than display low social count.”]
Let me give you an example:
You’re looking for a hotel to stay. You found 2 hotels online. Hotel A with a great price and ZERO review. Hotel B that’s more expensive but with plenty of reviews — good reviews. Which one you’ll choose? Hotel B I’m sure.
You should avoid negative social proof. Social Warfare has the option for you to set the minimum count before it’s displayed. It will hide the total count until it hits the minimum threshold.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Stop losing social sharing to negative social proof.” quote=”Stop losing social sharing to negative social proof.”]
It’s tempting to display all the social media icons on your website. But displaying too many social media icons mean spreading yourself thin.
In his book, American psychologist Barry Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. It’s the paradox of choice. More options always lead to fewer actions. Because it’s so hard to decide, you’ll just gonna do it later — much later.
QuickSprout — which only offer 3 social sharing options — saw a decrease in social sharing by 29% when he offered 5 social sharing options. Now, QuickSprout only offers 2 share buttons.
The secret to more share is to give users fewer options.
Only display 2-3 social sharing options on your site. Less is more.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Displaying less social sharing buttons can increase sharing by 29%.” quote=”Displaying less social sharing buttons can increase sharing by 29%.”]
11. Create meaningful content.
People like to share things that make them look good — maybe smart too. This is why how-to content and list content are the 2 most popular content types. These content types are screaming to be shared.
The key is you need to be thorough.
This is the part where your content needs to answer your readers’ questions and provide them with accurate information.
Don’t be afraid to get too detailed. In fact, the longer your content, the better it performs. Long-form content performs better — on every level. It ranks better. It earns more backlinks. It gets shared more.
In their study, Hubspot analyzes 6,192 articles and found that articles with a word count over 2,500 get shared the most on social media.
It gets better:
Research on QuickSprout shows that social media prefers long-form pages. A post with more than 1500 words received 68.1% more tweets and 22.6 more Facebook likes on average compared to a post with less than 1500 words.
12. Engage in conversation
When someone left a comment on your post, do them a favor. Reply the comment. It could be a positive comment — a thank you comment — or a negative comment — a nasty comment that would stop you from writing. Whatever it is, reply to them. Ask them for feedback. Answer their questions.
If you set up your media profile as mentioned above, when someone tweets your content, you’ll get notified. Thank them for the tweet. It’s that simple.
End your post by asking a question. This will invite your reader to offer their opinion and encourage them to leave a comment.
Also, check out these 5 effective ways to end your post by Julian from The Writing Cooperative.
Sometimes you just need to ask. Wish it was that simple. But it is. If you want more tweets or Facebook shares, ask for them. They might not think of sharing your post until you tell them.
You could say “If you enjoyed this blog post, share it with a friend!”. Or, “If you enjoyed this post, I’d be grateful if you’d help share it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you!”
It sounds simple. And it is.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, social traffic could become a major traffic source for your site — if done right. It needs tons of efforts, time and work. And it starts with social sharing.
Social sharing goes hand in hand with social signal — which is one of Google ranking factors. Increasing your social sharing will improve your ranking and boost your social traffic.
If you enjoyed this post, I’d be grateful if you’d help share it on Twitter or Facebook. Thank you! 😄
Hi Yuyu,
Thanks for sharing these. I recently launched my new website and I’m currently building my social media presence.
Hi Najmah, good luck with the new website. Hope this help to build up your social media presence fast.
So many great tips here! I’ve been thinking about using “click-to-tweet” for a while now so may just implement it.
I use Coschedule for my headlines too and I love it – sometimes takes a little while to get it into the 70s+ range but it’s so worth it.
I’m also going to look into hiding the low share counts – interesting points about that.
Thanks for all the tips! (And yep, pinned the post. ;-))
Glad you found it useful, Sarah.
If you’re not using “Social Warfare” plugin, you could try “Better Click to Tweet” plugin – it’s free.
Yes, I feel it takes a certain formula to hit 70s+ on CoSchedule. I did read somewhere that you need to be creative with your headline. Unfortunately, “creative” headlines never hit 70+.
Thank you for the pin 🙂
This is great, so glad I read it. I’m just now getting started with Pinterest for my blog specific and it’s going well- 3.4k visitors in three weeks! Not the greatest in comparison but still pretty good, i think. I like your input on the paradox of choice, too, and limiting yourself a little so that it’s not too overwhelming. I’m still trying to build but I’ll def keep in mind to specifically ask people to share, seems so easy.
Thank you, Kate. Most of the steps in this post are easy to follow and easy to do. In fact, you’re probably already doing some of it. I just got started with Pinterest traffic for my blog too and I really like the advanced option of Social Warfare.