Content marketing combines the creation of valuable content with social media marketing and search engine optimization.
It helps companies to drive in new prospects, new leads, to establish their own credibility in their respective industries and stay top in the minds with existing and potential clients.
Social media holds and will continue to increase their dominant role in content marketing as one of the key distribution vehicles for content sharing and engaging.
In addition to advertising and email marketing, social media shares of content via sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr and other platforms allows good content to be spread.
Social Media
There have been written a number of ways and things related on how to increase the shares of your content in social media and as such to ignite excitement and engagement among your prospects (current and potential customers). Following, we present the most, according to our opinion, important of them.
1) Choose Topics People Care About
Focus on topics and issues that your audience really cares about. You may have to analyze current search keyword volumes (e.g. via Google Adwords), asking sales and customer service representatives what customers always ask about, or which issues / topics usually get the most shares and comments in social media in general.
2) Focus on the headline
No matter how related and direct may your headline be in accordance to your content, you need to write it in such a way that will trigger the interest and attention of your readers. After all, you have a matter of few seconds to catch their attention which will lead them in clicking into your post. So headline is important.
3) Make Posts More “Skimmable”
Many industry influencers stay on top with their social media followers by curating valuable, unique or interesting content. If your post is not designed in a way that makes it easy to quickly grasp the key points, your readers / customers won’t bother to read and share it. focus on nice bold headers and key points (few sentences per point).
4) Use Photos and Graphics
Photos have a very important element for increasing social shares. Social media sites like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest usually feature the main picture from your post. The visual elements are critical to getting attention for your post in social media, to communicating the key message, and often can make or break the social sharing of a post. Without a proper photo or graphic, your chances are close to zero.
5) Improve Ease of Sharing
Position social media share buttons right where any reader must find them.
6) Build Your Social Foundation
In order to maximize sharing of your content, it helps if you have a large set of followers on one or more social platforms that make sense for your brand. Each real (not paid for) connection, follower or fan can have 10′s, 100′s, 1000′s, 100,000′s of followers themselves. With great content optimized for sharing, you can potentially reap 100′s of shares of your content from your own social base and their connections.
7) Connect with Current Events or Memes
Connecting topics that your readers care about with current events is a great way to create a relevant and interesting post. People love to share a new angle on a current topic or a creative addition to recent Meme.
What you have found that increases your social media content sharing?
Let us have your comments in the “box” below and don’t forget to share this post if you really liked it.