How To Get More Social Shares: The Definitive Guide For Bloggers

Have you ever wondered how the top bloggers get so many social shares?

We’ve all asked the question at some point.

And sure, social share counts are a bit of a vanity metric but that’s only part of the story.

The real truth is that awesome things happen when you get more shares on your content, like:

• Getting more traffic
• Growing your email list faster
• More bloggers will offer to contribute to your blog
• Other bloggers will invite you to contribute to their blog
• You’ll earn more backlinks which again, leads to more traffic

The benefits are endless, but what can you do right now to significantly increase the number of shares on your content?

Below you’ll find some of the most effective tactics, and you’ll learn exactly how to implement them.

Ready? Let’s dive in!

Ask newsletter subscribers to share and give them a reason

There’s a saying by Nora Roberts which goes something like this:

“If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

And while sometimes you won’t need to ask, more people will take action when you do.

I particularly like how Jon Morrow asks his newsletter subscribers to share the latest content from SmartBlogger (previously Boost Blog Traffic).

What I like about how Jon asks this question is that he gives a reason why you should share; it isn’t just “please share it”.

Having a reason to share is important.

Make it easy for your readers to share your content

Don’t make your readers work too hard.

Add social sharing buttons and you’ll make it far easier for them to share your content.

Here’s an example of our mine used to look (we changed it slightly in our latest redesign):

Here’s how to make this work

It’s not enough to just add some social sharing buttons and hope for the best.

Consider these two points:

• The more options you give people, the less likely they are to take action. It’s like when you open a menu at a restaurant and you’re faced with so many options that you don’t know what to choose.
• Which social networks does your audience use most? Twitter & Facebook are typically popular but if you have a B2B audience, LinkedIn is worth including.

Plugins and tools to add social sharing buttons with ease

Social Snap is one of my favorite WordPress plugins to display social sharing buttons. It has some interesting features such as the option to upload unique Pinterest images and a click to tweet feature which I’ll talk about more in a moment.

For more information, check out my post on social sharing plugins for WordPress.

Add “click to tweet” style widgets within your content

You may have seen these “click to tweet” style boxes already and they’re becoming more popular because they work.

I particularly like how they can be used within group interviews like this one compiled by Aaron Lee over at Post Planner:

When you click the link you’ll see something like this:

A free tool called ClickToTweet was used to create these pre-populated tweets but if you use WordPress, there are some alternatives that make the process even easier.

Earlier I mentioned Social Snap, which I use to display social sharing buttons but it also has a handy ClickToTweet function.

Here’s how it looks (click it to try it out for yourself):

There are a few other templates you can select and if you know CSS, you can style your own.

If you’re looking for a free alternative, you could use a plugin like Better Click To Tweet.

Avoid negative social proof and leverage positive social proof

We mentioned social proof earlier, but it’s important to discuss how this can impact other parts of your blog and how it can be an issue if handled wrong.

The truth about social proof is that it works both ways.

If you display a low number of social shares, it will convey that others aren’t sharing your content, and they’ll be less likely to share.

If a post hasn’t got many comments, others will be less likely to comment and more likely to if a post has a lot of comments.

You’ll overcome this hurdle as your blog grows, but there’s one way to get around it right now.

Hide social share counts until they’re above a certain number

A bunch of social sharing plugins have this feature, but not many.

For example, Social Snap has the option to hide total & individual social share counts while revealing the count once it’s above a certain number.

Want to learn more about how to use social proof? Check out my beginner’s guide.

Create content your audience will want to share

A big part of why people share content is the topic itself.

On the one hand you’ll have topics that are trending or on the verge of becoming a trending topic – these can generate significant traction initially, but then interest will diminish.

You’ll then have topics that people just can’t get enough of – otherwise known as evergreen topics.

Whether you focus on one of these or both will depend entirely on how you approach content planning and the needs of your audience.

I prefer to learn more towards evergreen topics but here are some tips on spotting both trending and evergreen topics:

How to spot trending topics

The challenge with identifying trends is that you just don’t know for sure what will trend.

You have to pre-empt these trending topics by watching other blogs in your niche along with industry publications.

So I’d recommend subscribing to the newsletters of other blogs in your niche along with industry publications.

The main reason for this is because large industry publications are watched by other bloggers. And more often than not, these publications will publish an article that starts to trend with the help of other bloggers linking to it.

Understanding your audience comes into this too.

You can then look out for topics that are a big deal to your audience and try to cover them before anyone else does. Covering a topic before the trend happens is key to making this work and using that trend to grow your audience.

It might take only one post going viral to put your blog on the map.

The truth is that it can be difficult to monitor trends productively, but Ann Smarty wrote a helpful post that covers how to do this in more depth.

How to spot evergreen topics

This is a tricky one but after you’ve been blogging for a while you’ll start to get a feel for which topics are evergreen, but a good place to start is Google Trends.

You can compare interest between several topics to see how they compare:

The truth is that in certain niches, evergreen topics will tend to fluctuate over time, and they also have the potential to become trending topics themselves.

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Created on Nov 25th 2019 00:59. Viewed 347 times.

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