8 Ways To Get More Social Media Shares

The dream of every writer is to get as many eyes on a piece of written content as possible. Nothing is better than a blog that has “gone viral.” After a small amount of effort, fan sharing and buzz is the gift that keeps on giving long after the pen has been put down. So how does one encourage friends to become content-sharing fans? The answers are surprisingly simple.

Check out this great infographic by Mari Smith on ways to boost Facebook shares:

Here are #8ways to get more social media shares:

1. Do your homework.

Nothing beats ORIGINAL, INTERESTING, INFORMATIVE content. Naturally, people want to share something they like. One of our writers helped a client bring in over 5,000 visitors literally overnight by writing a well-researched piece about Zumba Dance injuries that was picked up by Zumba instructors on Facebook and shared to the masses. The post really covered all angles — the prevalence of zumba injuries, why zumba injuries have gone up, which injuries are most common, and tips to avoid getting hurt. So the lesson here is to search multiple sources for your articles, dig into the content to find relevant facts and quotes, and peruse sites like Google News, Bloglovin.com, and AllTop.com for topic inspiration.

2. Be authentic & appeal to readers’ emotions.

Reno created the hashtag #biggestlittlecity to encourage citizens to post videos, images and stories on a microsite that explained what they love about the city of Reno, Nevada. Within a few months, more than 2,000 people had used the hashtag. It turns out, the locals are very passionate about where they live and they were more than happy to help spread the word about what makes their city special to them.

3. Offer incentive.

People like winning. They will share nearly anything if it means they could win a prize. For instance, a small pizzeria in Buffalo, New York started running a “Free Pizza Fridays” promotion, where Facebook fans would be entered in to win a free pie if they liked & shared a post of their current specials. Their most recent contest received 764 shares, 422 likes, and 75 comments!

Check out programs like Offerpop to help you create a quick contest that encourages fans to create content for you.

4. Call your followers out directly.

Sometimes simply asking people to re-tweet a message can go a long way. According to Hubspot, using the words “Please ReTweet” in your Twitter message will generate 4x more retweets. It’s also a good practice to express gratitude when others re-tweet you or mention you in one of their comments. Don’t just thank them — but re-tweet something of theirs as well. You’ll notice the link love tends to circulate and extend quite far! Whenever we reference something from another writer in our tweets, we always use “@” and link to their Twitter feed — not just to show that we dig their content, but also to point out our content as well. Another promotion that works quite well is to pick a “Fan of the Week” or feature fan photos on your website, like Wal-Mart does in their cover photos.

5. Tweet links.

As we mentioned, we tend to share a lot of links. One of the main reasons people visit social media sites is to access information. Microsoft research found that 52% of the retweet samples contained links. Did you know that nearly 80% of retweeted content involves news stories? Aim to be the first one to scrounge up news in your industry. Set up Google News Alerts for relevant industry keywords, sent directly to your inbox. Pounce on those stories and offer a little of your own insight. You also want to include a link to your website in a lot of your posts, so if someone retweets it, you will get more eyes on your original content as well.

Click to Tweet: 8 Ways to Get More #SocialMedia Shares #8ways via @mandymodgirl http://ctt.ec/TVcgd+

6. Make it easy.

Include social media share buttons and links on all your content to make it effortless for people to interact with your brand. The more hoops they have to jump through, the less likely they are to interact. Whether it’s a blog, an ebook, a webinar, a web page — encourage others to share. You’ll also want to use unique hashtags to make it easy for fans to send you their content. You can then use an app like Offerpop’s Hashtag Gallery to bring all the posts together on display.

7. Share images.

We all know that social media “is a visual medium” and that “people like images.” But there is some hard data behind these oft-repeated mantras. According to Facebook, some of the most shared content includes images, such as:  A social network flowchart by Breaking Copy – shared on Facebook by “Caribbean King” on October 20th that garnered a whopping 14,642 shares, Warren Buffet’s “How To Fix Congress” posted by Gene Vallee with 156,600+ shares, and Disney’s “Life is all about perspective” Bambi photo (8,200+ shares). Making it short and sweet, with a “share” request is often your best bet — like this post below, which received a quick 1,702 shares:

8. Seek outside help.

Even though you eat, sleep and breathe your industry and no one knows it quite like you, the ideas can get inevitably stale after a while. Sometimes it really pays to ask an outsider for insight. Another writer can often bring in the audience perspective you may be lacking. What do other people want to read about? What questions do they have pertaining to your business or brand? You’ll be amazed by what a trained writer with a penchant for research can dig up — not to mention, how eloquently a journalist can spin words into a narrative everyone wants to read (and share!) You can try one of our professional writers if you’d like.