social sharing - Express Writers

How to Ask Your Audience for a Share: 7 Methods to Earning More Social Shares

January 1, 2021July 12, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Asking for shares on your content, especially if you’re starting out, might feel an awful lot like asking a friend or family member for money: uncomfortable, and somewhat embarrassing. Luckily, you don’t have to be stuck in this share-free zone forever. By knowing the best practices that will make your content delightfully share-worthy, you can boost its impact across the web and succeed in making your content as popular as you’re dreaming of. Keep reading to find out our best tips to earning your maximum mileage on social media with every post you create. Let’s delve in! The Secret Sauce to Social Shares: Simpler Than You Think (or Is it?) Social shares, via platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc, are essential to the success of your online content (blogs, etc). It can do everything, from helping you build your brand to extending your reach – and allowing you to boost your online content marketing efforts to the next level. But how do you start to tap into the immense power of social content sharing? The answer is by connecting with people that can spread the word about your content, find your content truly useful to them, and boost your reputation online – your audience. Once you’ve connected with the right audience, did you know that simply and honestly asking for social shares is one of the most effective ways to get them? It sounds way too simple, but Wordstream lists it as the #1 way to earn a share. ASK your readers! Bloggers that don’t ask will likely never experience the level of popularity they want from their online content. Keep in mind that to earn the recognition of both customers, readers and peers, you’ll need to craft content that earns a high number of shares across the web. We’ll share tips below with more on that. And by asking for social shares and having content that has the potential to get somewhere (it’s level of usefulness, interest, etc.) you can expand your reach and become an authority in your given industry. 7 Best Practices for Earning Your Most Social Shares (Ever) I’ve divided my 7 key points into two lists: #1-4 in my list below are mandatory prerequisites you should be checking off your list before you even ask for a share. Next, #5-8 will detail what to do to physically see shares happen. Learn and enjoy! Pre-publish List: Practices 1-4 These four points are essential to make sure you get the most potential social juice out of every single post. Keep in mind the first one is optional, but absolutely worthwhile. Enjoy! 1. Optional but powerful: influencer love (mention other people in your content) Ready to learn how to create what I call an influencer love post? First, why is this optional? These are intensive, time-taking pieces, and they’re evergreen: you’ll only need a few if you do them right. It would be a great idea to do them periodically (for us, once/twice a year is enough). So, you don’t have to start here, or even create this type of content right away: but it’s worth it to know how to create these, and put one on your to-do list. Second: mentioning your influencers might sound simple, but you have to do it the right way. If you do, it’s a HUGE key to getting somewhere – not just with social shares in numbers, but all-around online connections and relationships (what’s more, you hone in on talking to the right people, too). Your key here is to mention your influencers in your content. These are defined as the people who are top-notch and well-respected in your industry. You can easily find them in BuzzSumo – once you’re logged in, it’s as simple as clicking on Influencers. From there, the Twitter influencers tab displays, and you can type in any topic to instantly see your influencers. Here’s what it looks like when I look up my industry (Joe Pulizzi is the man!): When you mention an influencer in your content and let him or her know about your post via social media, that influencer is likely to share your content for you, leading to increased visibility and more social shares with their audience and yours. We’ve done this – several times. We did exceptionally well on social with a blog on the Top 60 Content Marketers on Twitter. After writing and publishing it (which took a while – several weeks to compile and check the list), we tweeted to everyone we mentioned in the post that they’d been featured. Look at the stats – over 500 shares to date. A large part of the influencers retweeted our mention to their followers, which made for even more exposure. And, we had 17 comments on the piece – many from the influencers themselves. Another similar post we did where we talked about others was a roundup of the top content marketing predictions for 2016, interviewing 16 experts to get the predictions. We even took the finished copy and designed an infographic out of it. In total, it was shared over 300 times, and we saw retweets and social shares from the influencers as well. Even better, an interesting opportunity came my way from the relationships built. One of the influencers stayed connected with me, and reached out just this month randomly asking if I would like to help co-moderate a G+ group. The group has over 150,000 members. He’s even going to allow me to promote my book a bit in the group. How’s that for connections? Yeah! 2. Build reader trust before asking for social shares Fact: content is a give-take relationship. You can’t expect to take something (shares) from readers if you don’t give them something (i.e. expert content) first. With this in mind, it’s essential to ensure that your readers trust you before you start asking them to spread your content around. This is important for a few reasons. First, 78% of readers share content largely to build their own relationships. If you’re providing them with content that is not authoritative or trustworthy, you stand to damage those relationships for them, … Read more

The Science Behind Social Sharing: What Do People Share the Most?

January 1, 2021July 5, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Getting likes and shares on social content is a great way to see your business having an impact on clients. While you’re working on getting those likes and shares, you should take a look at why people like posts and why they end up sharing your content: the science behind social sharing. Here’s a direct look at these reasons with some great tips on how to create excellent content that your customers will not only read but also like or share. The Science Behind Social Sharing: Just Why Do We Like & Share Posts on Social Media? Posting to social media has many aims, including getting likes and shares from your clients. You’ve read how to create excellent, shareable content, but just why do people like posts or share on social media? There are many reasons for this and I am going to look at different reasons from the latest post from QuickSprout, investigating just why people do what they do on social media. 3 Reasons Why We Like Posts on Social Media Let’s take a look at a few reasons why your clients and even yourself, like to “like” things when it comes to Facebook and other social posts. 1. We Can Affirm What the Person Says. According to the QuickSprout post, one of the main reasons we like posts is we get the chance to affirm what the other person is saying. This doesn’t always mean we technically like something, but that we want to encourage the person. A like on our posts shows that our readers, friends, and families found something interesting or moving about our post. It also shows us that people are, in fact, listening to what we say. This is great when it comes to your business because that means that there are truly people reading your posts, even if you sometimes feel you are speaking into the social media void. 2. We Can Feel “Involved” With Something. As humans, we all have a need to feel involved in something. This is one reason why we look for groups to work with whether in the community or online. In the QuickSprout article mentioned earlier, one way we all work to feel involved is by liking something on Facebook. This goes for sharing, as well because it gets more people to see a post from a group or business you’re involved in. Remember this when you post social media content by posting things that will help your customers feel even more involved in your business. 3. We Can Express a Form of Empathy. A simple but deeply emotional reason in the science of social sharing. Have you ever noticed when someone says a family member or friend passes away, people update their Facebook and within minutes someone else likes it? Does that person really like that their friend’s loved one died? Are they really that callous? Actually, they aren’t. “Liking” doesn’t always mean you like a post, as I mentioned earlier. It can be a way to affirm, but it can also be a form of empathy. Many of us are separated from our friends, so a like on a sad update helps us feel like we are making them food or giving them a hug. Likes can be the emotional Heimlich of the Internet world, and help people feel a strong sense of community no matter what is happening. Three Top Reasons Why We Share Social Media Posts Now that I’ve looked at why people like posts, let’s take a look at why they share. Just what is the psychology behind a social share and what should your business do to get them? Take a look! 1. We Want to Share Interesting Things. Interesting things are important to us, and when it comes to our social media channels, we want to share interesting things. No one wants to share something that makes them look like a boring fuddy-duddy to their friend group. No matter how boring the topic is, if it is written in an interesting, unique way, people are more likely to share it because they found it, well, interesting. This is why you should share “how to” articles, lists, and other types of easy-to-read content because they can help you make some pretty interesting content no matter what. 2. We Want to Support Things We Care About. In addition to sharing interesting things, we also want to share posts to support things we care about, according to Shea Bennett from Ad Week. In fact, according to Shea, about 68 percent of people do this because it helps to show who we are while highlighting different areas we care for. This could be dumping a bucket of icy water over oneself to raise awareness and support for ALS or sharing a blog post from To Write Love on Her Arms. Whatever a person cares about, they will share. You can research your audience to learn what it is they care for, which can help you craft great content they will be willing to share with others. 3. To Develop and Nourish Our Online Relationships. Another reason people share, according to Garrett Moon from CoSchedule, is to help develop and nourish their online relationships. About 78 percent of users polled said this was the reason, and it is quite apparent by the way we all use our social channels and work to grow various relationships. These relationships can be with friends, family members, or even businesses, which is why your business should create content that focuses on the user, not your company. 4 Perfect Things You Can Share on Your Business’s Social Media Pages Now that you can see a few of the reasons behind why your clients will be liking and sharing content, you are probably wondering how you can create it. I am going to look at a few ways to create content your clients will definitely want to share and like, helping you promote and grow engagement and relationships. Once you focus … Read more