How to boost your social sharing

Sharing is at the heart of social media. It’s how participants start a conversation about something. They share it. But first, your content has to be worth sharing. It has to provoke enough thought about it for someone to like it and share it on other social media formats.

But, how do you make sure you create content that is share-worthy?

Share everything yourself – First, get in the habit of sharing things yourself. Share your blog posts, your YouTube videos and any content that you create on your social media. How often you share something depends on which social media you are using. Remember that people are sitting in wait for your shares and they don’t typically scroll back to find out if they missed anything. Therefore it’s up to you to find out the best time of day to share, and how often to share, based on which social media you’re using. For example, you can share on Twitter at different times of day as different people will see it.

Ask people to share – Always remember to include a call to action within your content. You want to tell people to ‘like’ the comment or your Page or ‘share’. They truly may not think of doing it without your directions. It’s not that they don’t like your content it’s just that most people are oblivious to the power of sharing and so they just don’t do it or think about it. Include asking in your call to action and you’ll get more shares right away.

Keep your social shares short – Twitter forces brevity, but Facebook doesn’t. However, studies show that shorter posts on Facebook get more shares than longer ones. So, use the ability to put a link to the main source of content in your shares and make your comments short on the actual social media. Make the comment get noticed by asking a question or asking for action with a headline that will get attention from your followers.

Pay attention to what your share looks like – What does the viewer see when they see your share? Do they see an image that gets their attention? Do they see words that make them want to read more? What exactly do they see on their end? It’s important to understand how size of images, and the automatic cropping of them on the different social media works so you know whether someone will be able to view or share your information or not. Although it does offer different sizes now, Instagram will often cut images shared from other platforms.

Finally, be sure that you’ve done adequate research on your target audience so that you know what they want. If you are not sharing the type of information your target audience wants, then you may end up with a lot of shares and likes from people who are the wrong audience. Keep your audience in mind for everything you do and you’ll be more successful in getting more shares with your social media.

BREAKING NEWS As I write this article, the biggest social media news this week is that both Disney and Microsoft are bidding to buy Twitter. There are still rumours that Google is interested but Facebook has definitely said it isn’t going to buy Twitter. Watch this space!

Facebook Rolls Out Dy- namic Ads for Brick-andMortar Retailers: Facebook introduced ‘new ways for advertisers to run smarter campaigns that achieve in-store results’ with dynamic ads for retail.

Facebook Expands Measurement Tools for Retailers: Facebook and its measurement partners announced several new products and integrations that will help marketers ‘understand which campaigns are performing best, which are selling the most products both in-store and online and ultimately, how advertising is helping to grow your brand’.

Facebook Rolls Out New Custom Ad Targeting Option: Facebook quietly rolled out the ability for brands to create custom audiences that target users who have viewed their canvas ads on Facebook.

Facebook Adds Link Ads, Enhanced Mobile Websites, Payments, and More to Messenger: Facebook has been ‘actively building capabilities for brands and businesses to be discovered on Messenger’ and added several new features ‘that deliver value for people, businesses and developers’.

Twitter Lifts 140-Character Count Limits: Twitter officially announced that “photos, videos, GIFs, polls and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters” in tweets, but notes in its developer documentation that attachments are still limited to up to four photos or one GIF, video, poll, quote tweet, or DM deep link per tweet.

Twitter Rolls Out Native Ads for Mobile App Installs: Twitter announced that “native ads are now available to advertisers running mobile app install campaigns on the Twitter Audience Platform.”