How to Guarantee Your Posts are Shared on Social Media

by KatieP, in category Head | Creativity

How to guarantee your posts are shared on social media

I have been implementing a new social media strategy which focuses on sharing the work of others, especially on Twitter. I love reading your posts, articles and stories, but sometimes I am unable to share them. If you want your work to be given its best chance to be seen by a wide audience you might want to pay attention to the following areas.

Write great content

While every post doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, I am more inclined to share your work if it is entertaining, educational or inspirational. Personal anecdotes and records of daily life are fine, but I’m looking for the meaty stuff.

Make sure, at least once in a while, you write something important — something you wish everyone knew, something opinionated or something raw and uncensored. There is way too much vanilla on the internet, be someone who has flavour and spice.

Have an image

All of my tweets have an image – it’s my preference and my style. If your post doesn’t have a picture I have to go searching for one which takes extra time. With the wealth of free images available today, there is no excuse for not putting a picture somewhere in your posts.

sharing images

Have a great looking + sharable image

Pick the best image you can find. Try to stick with clean, simple, uncluttered pictures with a limited palette of colours. If your picture is too busy, it probably won’t look good at a smaller size.

Some people are now entirely fixated on Pinterest so a great many images are in a vertical format whereas Twitter is horizontal. If you have writing over the whole of a portrait image, I can’t make it into a landscape picture. I am happy to do a quick crop and add some text, but I can’t do anything much with a Pinterest optimised image.

Be discoverable

The main place I search for content to share is in my Facebook feed. As we all know anything from a Facebook Page rarely makes it into someone’s feed, I rely on your personal profile. It is helpful if you link your post there at least once.

Did you know that if you share from your Page to your Profile, you can increase the organic reach of your Page because every like and share is recorded against the original post.

Have share buttons

This is blogging 101 – please make it easy to share. Even though I use Buffer, I click on your share button to copy your Twitter handle first (Buffer doesn’t pick them up automatically). Which brings me to my next point…

Include your twitter handle

Please make sure you have entered your twitter handle in the back-end of your share buttons. If you have, then you’ll be notified when I tweet your stuff, and you can reshare of any images I might make for you. Without a twitter handle, sadly I often move on to the next site.  (If you’re not on Twitter, please sign up now even if you don’t think you’ll use it.)

If I follow you, follow me back

If someone is taking the time to share your content and they’ve followed you, it would be nice if you followed them back. I think of Twitter as a great big cocktail party, and I’m there telling everyone how great your stuff is. “There she is,” I say, as you walk by. Hopefully you stop and at least say hello. If you don’t follow me back, it’s as though you’ve just stared at me and kept walking.

Share the love

You don’t have to go into the depth of detail I do to curate my Twitter feed, but if you read anything you enjoy, please take a few moments to share it on your social media networks. Ideally, you should try to share at least two things for every one of your own.

If we go back to the idea of a cocktail party, people will probably soon drift away if you talk about yourself all the time and don’t take an interest in anyone else. The best way to say thank you, or I enjoyed that, or you rock the internet is to share, share, share.

Let’s do it

You know, we could transform the web if we all concentrated on spreading great content and supporting each other. Now wouldn’t that be amazing?

Good luck, my friends. I’ll see you out there.

share T

How else can you guarantee your posts are shared on social media? What have I missed?

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Does the thought of creating online images make you break out in hives? I can help with that. 

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About KatieP

Embracing my midlife sexy while exploring modern love & relationships • Devoted to all things beautiful • Master of Arts in creative writing & non-fiction writing

48 thoughts on “How to Guarantee Your Posts are Shared on Social Media”

  7. Hi Katie! Thanks for all the good advice AND reminders. Those of us who have been doing it for a while get stuck now and then or simply “tired” ! It is always good to meet new people who have energy and enthusiasm for the process and so generous and willing to help us all and share. Thank you for all you do! ~Kathy

    1. Mmmm, I’ve been at it a fair while myself (blogging that is) and I love that there is always someone new to meet and something new to learn. Thank you for your comment.

      1. Oh yes…. I know you’ve been at it a while too, and that’s why it is always good to continually revisit some of these ideas that do work. The thing is — it’s not easy and does take work and determination for sure. You’ve re-inspired me. Thanks!

  8. Yes yes yes… GREAT advice!!! 🙂 I love sharing other people’s stuff… but when there isn’t a good pic to with it? I am sad, because I know I can’t share on Pinterest or anywhere without it getting seen as much as I’d like.

  9. Interesting ideas here. I would like to know specifically how you feel images on Twitter help shares. I mean, we all know we all like pictures but besides that.

    Anita

    1. Hi Anita, here’s a couple of studies I saw:
      “Research by Media Blog, which analyzed the content of over 2 million tweets sent by thousands of users over the course of a month, shows that adding a photo to your tweet can boost retweets by an impressive 35%.” and
      “Research by Twitter shows that tweets that include a photo or video receive 3 to 4 times more engagement (retweets, replies, etc.) than those that don’t.”
      I have seen a growth in both followers and traffic since I started putting more energy into Twitter.

  10. This is phenomenal advice! Now I feel like I should sit down and take a look at my blog just to make sure I’m keeping up with all these amazing innovatives! Thank you for sharing this, Katie!

  11. Hi Katie,
    You improved my Pinterest graphic, and then I saw you on Elena’s …Batman site. I could tell you were interested in Pinterest, so I came over. You have interesting articles here. I also saw photography which I am also interested in. I take all my own photos and have blogged about taking good photos. I’ve also blogged about pinnable images.
    Janice

  12. I love the way you write, Katie. You have this knack for making things relevant, for explaining concisely and without distracting frills. And for sharing your extensive experience in a way that makes it feel like we’re sitting around your living room coffee table, on cushions on the floor, no shoes, maybe a glass of wine or a good cappuccino 🙂 Love it.

  14. This are great tips – I never even checked to see if my twitter share button had my handle on it. Fortunately, it does. My to-do list this weekend is to make my share options more noticeable.

  16. Some very good points here – especially the vanilla comment! When I started my blog, I intended it to be aimed at the ‘over 50s’ but could not get away from my roots as a press/magazine writer. So I went with it and worked on stories about other people and things I found interesting.

    Then I found lots of other mid-life bloggers and felt my stuff wasn’t focused enough on my experiences as a post-menopausal woman. However, try as I might, I just do not feel right focusing on age. I kind of lost my way a bit after seeing all the blogs about menopause and getting older. I started feeling as if I am not writing about the ‘right things’. But something inside me gets bored with focusing on age related stuff when I write. And for reading, I tend to be drawn to mid-life bloggers who write about non-age-related stuff. There are some brilliant blogs that do a bit of both. Thanks for your tips.

    1. Hi Gilly,
      I’m a bit like you I think, a bit tired of the age related stuff — there’s only so much you can say about it.
      Write whatever you want – that is where the magic is.

  17. Hi Katie,
    Nice article. I will be following your blog. You visited my site today. Thank you! I’m glad you liked my new post about how to raise your SEO.
    Janice
    PS I shared your article on Twitter. I am MrsPaznanski there
    Janice

  18. Hi Katie – No question is a bad one right? If I understood correctly you are recommending shares from my FB Page OffTheSidewalk to my Personal page Carlyn Riggs Bullock. How do you do that? When I click Share on my FB Page the only option it gives me is to share as my Page to my Page. I must be missing something. Also, where on the back end are you entering your Twitter handle so it appears in a tweet from your twitter share button. Mine isn’t but I am not seeing where I can add it.

    Thanks so much, great stuff!!!

    From offthesidewalk in Tampa, FL with a smile, Carlyn 🙂

    2. I like butting in, Diane 😀

      It’s a bit hard to explain without screenshots but on your post on your FB Page click the share button and choose the one that says Share…

      It should ask if you want to ‘share to your own timeline’ and there is a space for you to write a comment. The dropdown menu also lets you share to groups and other pages you manage.

      I’ve sent you a friend request on FB so I can talk you through it via message.

    3. Sometimes you can’t put your Twitter handle in depending on what sharing plug in you’re using. If you use Jetpack then you add it in settings.

      I have a premium share button called Social Warfare that lets me do all sorts of groovy things including click to tweet and adding images to my tweets and pins (check it out on this post). It’s only $24 a year and SO worth it. Here’s my affiliate link … http://warfareplugins.com/?ref=176

  19. Twitter scares the *&^% out of me. Don’t know why… However, I have recently signed up so now I’m off to make sure my twitter handle is where it should be.

    Thank you for sharing this info. Very, very useful!

    1. Don’t be frightened of Twitter.
      Just start off sharing your posts and sharing other people’s (I try to do 1:3 ratio so my feed isn’t just all me).
      If you follow me @chaotickatiep I’ll be sure to follow you back.

  21. Lots of great info here! I tend to post to my personal profile and my page – love the idea of sharing it from my own page!

    I’ve been hiding a vertical photo for Pinterest in my page. Whether it gets used?

    1. Thanks for reading and commenting, Jenn. In my experience, for non-food/fashion bloggers the traffic comes from Pinterest back to your blog. People don’t pin from my blog necessarily, but see my pins already on Pinterest and click through if that makes sense.

  22. Excellent tips! I just have to share this post with others. Also… your images are GREAT! I have been working on creating better images recently so thank you for the inspiration.

  24. These are amazing tips. I didn’t know the one about sharing your post from your page to your personal profile. Thank you. I agree with you, not a lot people add a twitter image, so it’s hard to share. Thank you for great, totally do-able tips!!

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