How many times have you read a great article or blog and noticed those little social media link buttons at the top of the page? Their goal, of course, is to encourage you to share the content.
Today, promoting and sharing website content has become a way of life online. Many users see sharing as an effective way of communicating with peers and saying that what they just read was interesting and valuable.
How do you become more effective in promoting your content to a wide variety of platforms to gain shares, build brand awareness and drive website traffic?
To start, it’s crucial to understand all the social channels your target audience is using and keep your message aligned with your overall content strategy for the website. Explore as many social channels as possible; some of the favorites include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
The more social channels you consistently use to promote your content, the more likely it will be socially shared and read, which ultimately leads to more traffic back to your website.
In fact, Google encourages you to promote your content to be shared, especially if you’re utilizing Google Plus. When you start a Google Plus account – even if you don’t have much of a following yet – Google likes it, and in return some of your key words or topics will eventually take a higher priority in organic search.
To attract your readers’ attention to your blog or article, you need to have compelling reasons for them to click, which leads to social sharing. Here are a couple tips on how to gain your target audience’s attention:
- Choose an interesting image that will clearly resonate with your audience, and that complements the content. Thought – provoking content mixed with interesting images sparks a sense of curiosity.
- Depending on the social media channel, create relevant or popular hashtags describing the content link, to help grow your following.
- Use video clips complemented by unique content to intrigue your target audience to click, watch and share.
Remember: If you’re trying to get the most effective reach from your blogs or articles, make the content compelling, and make it easy (one click) for readers to share it socially. Once you promote the content, watch your social followers and their friends take care of the rest!
