Proven Tips To Maximize Social Media Content Shares

Have you ever decided to ditch a post on social media altogether because you simply didn’t like the way it looked? Or couldn’t find the right image to represent your post accurately? You also want to increase social media content shares, but also want to do it quickly, easily and without too much fuss. But it is important to understand that creating relevant and engaging content and posting regularly on social media is the basis to increase social media content shares.

Here are a few tips to maximize social media content shares

Incorporate social media sharing buttons on your website:

Social sharing buttons on websites are a great tool to increase social traffic and the outreach of your social posts when utilized to their fullest potential. Social sharing buttons provide the visitors on your site with a simple one-click method to share content from your website, directly to their social platforms.

Incorporating social media sharing buttons on your website is made especially easy for those that run a self-hosted website through WordPress. There are many plugins that you can utilize to run social media sharing buttons, however, each requires a little time and experimentation to find the one that has the functionality that you require.

Create a great and relevant title for each article:

There are many reasons as to why a title is important to the success of your overall article, however, one of the most significant of them is social media optimization. There are many social media tools, such as HootSuite, that will automatically pull the title of an article, together with the link, whenever a page of a website has been shared.

The key to write a great title does not always mean spending hours trying to find the perfect headliner. Rather, ensure that the title accurately reflects the content of the article. Also, be sure to not choose a title that is too vague or generic – you still want your content to stand out from the crowd.

Optimize your images for various social media platforms:

Even though you may have the perfect image that has the right dimensions and looks terrific when you see it on your desktop. Though, it can change dramatically when shared on social media. This is simply due to the cropping, and image dimensions that are preferred on each of these platforms, so an image that looks great on Facebook, may not look so good on Pinterest or Twitter. In order to expand the potential for sharing amongst various social media platforms, you should be sure to keep these image preferences in mind.

We have created a guide of the dimensions that work best for the images that are shared on the major social platforms:

• Facebook: 1200 x 628 pixels
• Twitter: 1024 x 512 pixels
• Pinterest: 735 x 1102 pixels
• Instagram: 1080 x 1080 pixels

Establish Twitter Cards:

If you are a frequent user of Twitter, then you may have noticed that some tweets have a ‘view summary’ option.
This is an example of a Twitter card which is an extremely useful tool that is used to include an image into a post, along with a brief description without using the entirety of the short 280 character limit that is available per tweet.

Utilize Pinterest article pins:

Pinterest has the features of supporting a range of rich pin types, including article pins. These pins allow users to receive more information about the content when it is shared.
If you have configured your website to be able to support article pins, a short description of the article, along with the title, image, and the contents, will be presented in the default display. This allows the post to be more accessible to the users on social platforms. As you are able to pinpoint and specify the text that is included, you have the freedom to optimize the description of the post to ensure that it is easier to be found through the internal search of the social platform.

Include links to your own social media profiles:

Many users of social media platforms cite their sources through @ mentions. In order to make it easy for your audience that shares your content, to cite your website or other social platforms by ensuring that your profiles are visible and easy to find, display your links to your website in many places, including the header, footer, and sidebar of every page.
This also has the added bonus of helping to increase your followers, especially if a social media influencer or company that has a large audience base shares your content or mentions your profile in a post.

Make memorable statements that stand out:

If your article has an interesting or memorable quote, be sure to make it stand out on your page. You can achieve this by highlighting the text or by using the text as a call-out so that any users or traffic that are coming on your website can easily copy and paste the text into a post on social media. This streamlines the process for the audience. The aim of your content is always to try to make the information as easily accessible and shareable to gain traction.

Suggest a hashtag, or create your own:

Most content online has a short lifespan, especially on Twitter where updates are constant and it can be easy to be drowned out on a feed. This is why it is important do everything to ensure that your post receives as much visibility as possible, and one way to do this is to suggest a hashtag for your audience to use.
Not only does this help to expand social media content shares, but those that share the content will appreciate the effort that has gone into the post. Using hashtags is also an ideal way for you, and your audience, to streamline a search to find posts about your brand or a particular topic.

Make it easy to re-share your content:

It is ideal when someone shares your content on their social media platforms, but it can be made even better when others re-share it.
When you are constructing your post or message on a social platform, keep in mind that each will have its own methods for re-sharing. For example, for a post to be re-tweeted (RT) on Twitter, it takes up extra characters on the post. In order to account for this, you may not want to use the entire character limit so users can freely re-share your posts.
Also, make it even easier for your audience to re-share your content by utilizing cross-promotion strategies.

Conclusion:

When it comes increasing social media content shares, it is important to post consistently and post content that your audience will find relevant and useful. Don’t forget to monitor your content and the type of content that you post to see which get the most shares across all social media platforms. This is the best way to refine your content strategy, and ultimately boost social media content shares.