Social media marketing has become an indispensable aspect of any online strategy that wants to be a success and establish a long-lasting relationship with the audience. A modern user cannot live without social media.
Facebook, Twitter or Instagram feed - this is what their day commonly begins with. So, it goes without saying that social media is the place that you need to target in order to make a wider audience of web users learn about you or your brand.
When working on content creation, we cherish hopes that it will find its audience and will be actively shared across the web. However, if your post isn't optimized for social media, chances are that it won't generate the real buzz around it, that you might possibly have expected. So, in order for such a situation not to occur, we provide below 6 proven steps to make your content share-worthy.
Learn what your audience likes
It will take you some time to discover your audience’s preferences. Tastes differ, as well as the reason why people follow you online. Some of them may enjoy your product or service, others may simply like the solutions that your offer provides, another group of people may be looking for some useful tips and tricks that they can apply in practice, whereas all the rest might be looking for some fun stuff.
In order to determine a set of topics and types of content that your audience enjoys the most, research the posts that gain more likes and shares than the rest of the data that you provide. Also, find out what particular hashtags the users add to their posts when sharing your content or making their own publications. Based on that knowledge you will be able to enhance your social media strategy by providing content that is of the greatest interest to your audience.
If you take a look at TemplateMonster's Pinterest page, you will see that the board with New website Templates has gained the biggest number of pins and followers. To be more specific, GPL WordPress themes receive the biggest number of likes and shares.
This means that on the modern highly competitive market webmasters search for ready-made products that are built as per the latest web standards and with the popular web trends in mind. The possibility to use a template on more than one site lures the web community, making them like, share and download the respective content more often than the other.
Provide useful content based on the interests of your audience
Generally speaking, all content can be divided into three major groups – the one that educates, interests and entertains the audience. Now, as you have studied the preferences of your followers, you can start experimenting with these three major types of data and see which will generate the biggest number of shares. It goes without saying that people like to discover something new. This is when argumentative posts with lots of case studies and real-life examples will come in handy.
Pretty often the users simply look for texts that are written in an easy-to-follow manner and contain some interesting pieces of information, which shouldn’t necessarily reflect an educational purpose. Such content makes the users become interested in the way the story flows.
Entertaining content is of the greatest demand among social media users. And it’s clear why. People go to social media platforms to switch off from work, some routine tasks, or simply in search of the things that can make them laugh. Entertaining content appeals to the users’ emotions, sticks in their memory for longer and encourages sharing the stuff that one has seen or felt with everyone around. That’s why that kind of content gains the biggest number of shares.
Our recommendation is to mix all-that-educational and interesting posts with funny videos/images/memes/gifs, etc. In that way, you will create a user-friendly, entertaining yet outstanding brand image.
Create catchy headlines
A well-written headline is half-way to success. So, it’s crucial to know techniques that make a headline powerful and eye-catching in social media. The most popular ones are listed below.
When scanning through their social media feeds, the users will see a number of bold headlines from your competitors, each trying to capture their attention and share their content. Here are the 4 components that should be present in your social media headlines:
- The sense of urgency. The users must feel like they will miss some valuable information if they do not open your post.
- The headline should sound useful to the audience. What's in there for them? What value does it bring to the reader? These are a few questions that reveal usefulness of your post to the readers.
- You should sound authoritative. Stats, clearly defined benefits, and other specific data motivate the users to dive into your post.
- Show off your personality. Do you sound unique? Is there anything in your post that no one else has ever spoken about? Making it somewhat funny or even weird will capture the users' eye and help you stand out from the competition.
Use the power of images
Visuals are strong attention-grabbers. Regardless of what your audience enjoys, images are the proven way to catch their eye and press for action. In fact, images can motivate a user into taking an action way faster than written content. The rule is applied to all social media platforms available.
By default, Instagram and Pinterest are known as the two key photo-centric social sharing platforms. However, all the other social media solutions also support visual content, making it possible for you to craft posts that are not only informative but also eye-catching.
Add CTAs
The thing that we should always keep in mind when working on our social media strategy is that our brand isn’t the only one that the users will follow and whose posts they will see in the news feed. So, we shouldn’t be shy to make bold CTAs in our posts.
People need to realize exactly what we want them to achieve (like, share, comment, etc.) when simply looking through your post. The clearer and simpler you express your CTA, the more likely the users will carry out the actions that you expect them to do.
Make your content easy to share
Is it easy to locate social sharing buttons in your posts? Does it take the users too much effort to find the options to share your post in social media? If people cannot find social sharing buttons at a glance, chances are they will not do so. That's why, no matter what device or web browser one is using to reach your content, make certain that your social share buttons are easy to find.
As a rule, these are placed at the very bottom of the post. However, you can also make them sticky in a right or left sidebar of your site's layout. It's up to you to decide.
You can also run A/B tests and see which placement of social sharing options results in a bigger number of sales.
That's it for today. We hope that you found the aforementioned tips useful and worthy of being shared with your friends 😉 If there are other tips that you frequently use in your online strategy, feel free to share with us below this post. Your feedback is highly appreciated.