Guest Blog: 5 Tips to Make Your Blog More Socially Shareable

So, you’ve got a great business. But do you have a great blog? You may think you do, yet are somehow finding yourself scratching your head an awful lot of the time trying to figure out why your shares and engagement are seeming to fall a little flat.

You of course want as many people as possible to read, share and engage with your content, but it may be the case that you are failing to attract the steady stream of readers that you so much desire. If this sounds like you, then don’t worry. You’re certainly not alone, and your blog is far from a lost cause. All you need to do is start thinking a little more strategically in how you go about making your content a little more compelling and exciting for your readers, and you’ll soon find that they start sharing it all over the web.

So, below we’ve got 5 super easy tips to make your blog more socially shareable that you can start putting into action immediately, and begin getting your blog and your business the exposure it deserves.

Put Counters Next To Your Share Buttons

There is a bit of a monkey-see-monkey-do psychology when it comes to social sharing. A study entitled The Power Of Likes reports that the more ‘likes’ an article has, the more likely it is that any new readers will ‘like’ it too – even if the actual content and writing isn’t all that brilliant.

And so, it is imperative that you put counters in next to your share buttons on your blog, so that new readers are prompted to do what others have done before them and ‘like’ your content as well. A little bit of hype, it seems, can work wonders for your content. And, needless to say, the more ‘likes’ that your posts have, the more they appear to be of importance to casual readers, who in turn will be more likely to share your content with their own networks. Quite simple really.

Make Your Posts Positive

Good news is a lot more shareable than bad news. That’s just the fact of it. While this may seem counterintuitive (there only ever seems to be devastating headlines when we tune in to George Alagiah at 6pm), when it comes to the web – and particularly social media – people like a feel good story much more than they do a miserable one.

Studies back this up. BuzzSumo reports that the “most common emotions invoked by articles that were shared were awe, laughter and amusement”. And Ispos showed that “61% of people shared interesting things, 43% of people shared funny things, and 29% of people shared unique content.”

Don’t Rely On The Same Headline For Each Of Your Social Networks

Each of your social media platforms have their very own particular quirks, and their very own audiences who themselves have very particular expectations. For instance, a funny video of Wayne Rooney with a cat stuck up his trouser leg would quite likely go viral on Facebook, but the more serious brethren of LinkedIn would probably club together and have your account suspended if you dared to share such a thing on there.

Therefore it is important that you tailor your content to suit the expectations of each platform on which you post it – or at least you should tailor the headline.

BufferSocial have handily put together a very revealing table of common words in highly-shared headlines by each of the most popular social platforms, which discloses the very particular personalities of each network.

As you can see, Pinterest is all about food and recipes, whereas you’ll do best with giveaways on Twitter, and your technology posts will fare best on LinkedIn.

Produce More List Posts

I’m a blogger, and so I know how time-consuming and sometimes frustrating it can be to put list posts together. There’s inevitably a lot of reading round and linking involved, all of which takes up time (and patience). But, readers love them, and so in the end creating such posts actually often equates to a better investment on your time than some other run-of-the-mill offerings that you may normally be churning out.

Put simply, list posts work. The direct ancestor of the modern day infographic, they are easily scanable, and by nature contain a lot of clearly laid out, useful information that people can very readily absorb at a glance.

Be sure to indicate to your readers in your headline that it is a list post that you are posting, as these are infinitely more sharable.

To use this very blog post that you’re reading now as an example, I know that by giving it the title of ‘5 Tips To Make Your Blog More Socially Shareable’, it will indeed be more shareable than if it were titled ‘How To Make Your Blog Socially Shareable’ (so you better share it now – don’t show me up!!).

Make Your Closing Count

It may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people close out their blog posts without igniting their readers to take some sort of action or ask them to engage somehow. It comes down to getting your readers emotionally invested with your content, and indeed you and your business and brand.

So when you’ve finished your blog, always end it by trying to spark further conversation or even debate over what you’ve just had to say. I will here close out this blog with an example…

Written By: Kerry Butters
Founder and Director of markITwrite and an accomplished technology writer who adores all things tech, the written word and social media. She writes widely across enterprise and consumer matters