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After spending hours crafting the perfect piece of content, it can be disheartening when it doesn’t perform.
Done right, content marketing can have a powerful impact. Well-crafted content builds brand authority, connects with your target audience, and drives traffic to your website.
But if you consistently hit publish and find that nobody shares the content you create, it might be time to adjust your strategy. Because your audience is bombarded by content daily, it takes more than the standard content promotion strategies to cut through the noise and deliver real results.
Let’s explore the basics of increasing social shares on your website, including the proven strategies you can use to get more eyes on your content.
What Is Social Sharing in SEO?
Social sharing refers to sharing content — blog posts, product pages, videos, and other web content — on a social media platform. You can share content from your brand’s website on content distribution channels like:
- TikTok
Social sharing is just one of the many social signals that play a role in search engine optimization (SEO). These metrics tell search engines like Google that a website’s content is worth engagement. Search engines consider this when determining a website’s authority and relevance, which is linked to its overall ranking.
Here are some of the SEO benefits social shares can deliver.
Increased Visibility and Reach
Content shared on social media profiles reaches a far wider audience than your circle of existing customers. Increased visibility of your content can also lead to increased website traffic, which can boost your authority in the eyes of search engines.
Quality Backlinks
When people share web content on social media, it can generate quality backlinks to your website. Once a piece of content picks up steam, authoritative websites are more likely than ever to use it, which can lead to valuable inbound links. These backlinks are an essential factor in SEO ranking.
Amplified Engagement
Engagement metrics on social media — likes, shares, and comments — aren’t direct ranking factors for SEO. However, when your content is share-worthy, you increase the chances of website users spending more time on your website and interacting more with your web content.
Top 6 Ways To Increase Social Shares for Your Website Content
Even if you create share-worthy content, what if it’s not getting the recognition it deserves? You can significantly boost your website's social shares with the right content distribution strategies and a few tweaks to your content structure.
Here are the top six ways to increase social shares for your website.
1. Choose Topics Based on Historical Data and Trends
It’s not enough to center your content topics on what you think your target audience would want to share. To increase the chances of your content resonating with an online audience, you need to have your finger on the pulse of the latest social media trends and consumer preferences.
Whether it’s a hot-topic hashtag or a trending meme, capitalizing on what people are already talking about is a powerful way to increase shares. When you study the historical and current online trends, you can use that valuable intel to develop content that’s responsive to user demand, keeps up with rising trends, and raises your website's profile.
2. Create Valuable Content With Catchy Headlines
At the end of the day, the rules of social shares aren’t complicated. People share content on social media that they want to share.
An impactful piece of high-quality content should teach them something new, surprise them, or make them want to come back for more. If your content doesn’t provide a real, tangible benefit, it’s not valuable enough for your audience to share.
To stand out in the sea of similar-sounding headlines, your content headers and captions should be catchy enough to grab someone’s attention. Research shows that longer headlines generate 76% more social shares, while headlines that ask a question generate 23% more.
3. Optimize Images and Metadata for Social Media
Almost all the most popular content-sharing platforms — TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. — are designed to circulate visual content. Adding high-quality images to your text-based content increases your chances of getting more shares. These images should be the right size and format to comfortably view on social media.
Another factor to consider is metadata. Metadata — including image descriptions, page titles, and web page descriptions — makes it easy for websites to be indexed by search engines. To optimize your metadata for social media visibility, include trending keywords for your niche.
4. Make It Easy for People To Share Your Content
You could undermine your content visibility if your social share buttons are difficult to find. Social sharing buttons should be easy to access on all parts of your website, including:
- Headers
- Footers
- Sidebars
- Above or below content (or both)
No matter where you place your website share buttons, make sure they’re optimized for viewing. That means optimizing your site design for prominent placement, sizing, and colors that stand out to your audience.
5. Consider Reaching Out to Influencers
To build more influence with social media communities, many successful marketers turn to a tried-and-true marketing method for the digital age: Influencers.
When you create a post, the top social media users in your circle are some of the first people who should know about it. A single share on social media by one of these top influencers could be enough to give your content massive exposure.
6. Share Your Content on Multiple Channels for Visibility
The average person uses six to seven platforms every month, highlighting the need for a content marketing approach across social media channels. The goal is to get visibility for your website content across as many social channels as possible.
That said, it may not be possible to maintain a sustained content distribution strategy on every single social media platform. It helps to focus on a handful of the most important ones for your niche.
Research shows that Instagram and Pinterest tend to drive the least traffic to external websites, while Facebook and YouTube bring in more social media referrals. However, the data can vary depending on the industry.
To choose your channels, consider where your target audience spends most of their time.
How Compose.ly Can Help You Create Shareable Content
Getting more social shares is a goal for almost every content marketer. However, it takes a sustained effort — day after day — to publish stellar website content that generates shares.
Delivering quality, trending content is the first step. Over time, you can refine a content marketing strategy that results in consistent shares from your ideal customers.
To get content that attracts social shares, you need a writer who deeply understands what your brand brings to the table. That’s where Compose.ly can help.
Hire expert writers with a demonstrated history of success in your industry so you can put out consistent, shareable content that drives real results.
