A great method of getting more traffic to your blog or website is to make sure your blog posts are optimized to be shareable! This comes down to not just the content, but also how it’s written, and by using on-page tools that can prompt your readers to share.
To get more blog shares, you’ll want to make sure that each post is easy to share, enticing to share and valuable to share!
Before diving in to the nine ways to get your blog posts shared more, let’s look at these three aspects that make up a shareable post:
Easy to share: Technically speaking, there’s a tonne of on-page tools available for bloggers to make post sharing easy for readers to do. These tools streamline the sharing process and will prompt users to share.
Enticing to Share: An enticing blog post will be professional in it’s written content, imagery and structure. Readers will feel better about sharing a high-quality page over one that’s not so professional.
Valuable to Share: This mostly comes down to your content. Where you provide value, readers will deem it worthy of sharing to their friends or to their own socials, where they can easily refer back to it.
Each of the nine steps below fall into one of the above three categories, to holistically give your post more ‘share-power’! Read on to learn more.
Nine Ways to get your Blog Posts Shared More
Create Helpful Content
A shareable blog post at the very basic level, must be one that helps the reader in some way. Think about what problem they have that your post is solving, or how your blog post will help them. Generally, helpful content is information-based and will answer a question or solve a problem. Helpful content get shared more for two reasons: People want a way to save the post so they can refer back to the information, or they think it will be helpful to others in their network.
Have an Easy-to-Read Structure
Any post that gets shares must be easy to read! You can have the best informational content – but if it’s not easy to read, it’s unlikely to go viral. So how do you make your blog posts easy to consume? In the digital age, content must be easy on the eye.
Well-read (and well-shared!) content is normally broken down into headings, subheadings, small paragraphs, dot points and other structural systems. A page that is just a block of text is way too tiring to read. On the other hand, when content is broken up on the page, it makes it easier to engage with and easier to scan.
Content that is helpful is also usually easy to break down into a structure, as you can create lists, dot points, or highlight important paragraphs.
Specific & Enticing Headlines
A great headline is one of the building blocks of a post that not only gets shares, but gets clicked on in the first place! A headline must entice the reader to click through, while specifically telling them what they’re about to read. The more specific a headline, the better!
A few tips for great headlines include using emotive language (such as unbelievable, revolutionary, or dynamic), creating lists (like 10 ways to…), tutorials (how to….), or guides.
Steer away from click-bait style headlines or sensational ones that don’t really truly describe what your post is about. If people feel they’ve been misled to your website, they’ll be outta there quick smart!
Bright & Optimized Imagery
The use of images is another great way to add to the structure of your post. I don’t need to tell you that we’re living in a visual age, and a great image can be the difference between someone clicking on your blog post or passing it by. Great images also make your post easier to share to other visual platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest and even Instagram.
For Pinterest specifically, make sure your blog images are vertical. You may even want to create images with the blog post title on them, to make them stand out on the feed.
To get more shares, make sure your imagery:
- Relates to the topic of your blog post. Vague, stock-like images won’t do you any favours!
- Are quality. Images for web don’t need to be huge (read this post for more info on image optimization), but they do need to be bright and sharp. No one wants to repost a poor photo!
- Aren’t stock imagery (if possible)! It’s always a hundred times better to use your own photos. Stock images have a look about them that you can generally tell from a mile away! They often won’t gel with your overall blog style or your post’s topic.
Include a Call To Action
A great way to get readers to share your posts, is to ask them! At the bottom of your post, prompt them to share it if they found it helpful, or Pin it to save the post for later. If readers don’t know what you’d like them to do after reading your post, how can we expect them to act?! This is a basic call to action strategy that should get you more shares.
Share the Post Yourself
If your business or blog has other platforms, be sure to share your post on them! Not only will it get your post out to a wider network, but shared posts often lead to re-shares. Outside of social media, share your post in your email marketing, in interviews and with specific people you think it would benefit.
Add Easy Social Share buttons
Easy Social Share is a great plugin for WordPress websites. It prompts readers to share the page to their network easily, without having to copy-and-paste links or find the platform they’re looking for. There’s a few different positions on the page you can place them, and we’ve found the bottom-of-page location generally does the best.
Click-To-Tweet links
This system is a Twitter link generator you’ve probably seen on pages before. You take a statement from your post to generate a Twitter link from. It prompts people to easily share your message with just a click!
Pinterest Pin-It Hover Buttons
While Pinterest and Twitter links are included in the Easy Social Share Buttons, we also use Pinterest hover buttons. When a reader hovers over an image, a ‘Pin It’ button pops up, encouraging them to Pin the image. The version we use is a feature included in Easy Social Share, but there’s also single versions available to use as plugins too. This is a great way to get more shares to Pinterest.
If you can hit as many of the nine steps above in the one blog post, you’re well on your way to getting some shares! Let me know in the comments if you have any other tips you use to get your blog posts shared more.
