Do you spend hours creating blog posts only to get no social shares? This is frustrating for any business owner, but it’s a common problem. Most posts receive few social shares. In fact, more than half of blog posts receive two or less Facebook interactions!
After doing the hard work of writing a blog post, you want it to reach the widest possible audience. Social shares can introduce your brand to a wider audience and help you reach new customers. If no one is sharing your posts, you’re missing out on this opportunity. But how can you create posts that people want to share? Here are seven secrets for creating blog posts that get shared.
1. Offer Value to Your Readers
Readers share posts that are valuable to them. Value means that readers can learn something from the posts and apply the information at some point. A post that’s valuable to one person may be useless to another, so you need to know your audience.
Start by doing audience research. Find out what questions your readers are asking and what problems are keeping them up at night. If you can answer their questions and solve their problems, they’ll find value in your posts.
2. Create the Right Types of Posts
Offering valuable content isn’t enough. You also need to present that content in the right format. Some types of blog posts are more shareable than others. List posts get a bad rap sometimes, but they claim the most social traction. These posts are very shareable because readers know what to expect: a list of points about a certain topic.
Why-posts are the next most shareable type of post. These posts provide details that support the headline’s conclusion. For example, a post called “Why No One Shares Your Blog Posts” could provide similar details to this article, but in a different format.
3. Write Compelling Headlines
Your headlines are the first things your audience will read. If the headlines aren’t interesting, they have no reason to click through to your posts, and no reason to share the posts with their networks. Too often, headlines are an afterthought. After spending hours writing a blog post, writers spend a few seconds on the headline.
To write better headlines, look to headline templates. There’s a science to writing great headlines, and the same types of headlines grab readers’ attention over and over again. For example, headlines with numbers, attractive adjectives, and call-to-action words are consistently successful.
4. Add Visual Appeal
Readers like images. Sixty-five percent of people are visual learners, and 40 percent respond to visuals better than text. Visual content is a whopping 40 times more likely to get shared on social networks. With those stats, adding visual appeal to your blog posts is an obvious choice.
Incorporate relevant, appealing stock photos into each of your blog posts to add visual appeal. Every image should add value to your posts. Including infographics is another way to add visual appeal. Free tools like Canva, Venngage, or Piktochart can help non-designers create attractive infographics.
5. Make Posts Easy to Share
Sharing a blog post on social media can be time consuming. Readers need to copy the link to your post, log in to their social network of choice, and paste the link in the status box. Readers are busy, and they may not want to expend any effort sharing posts.
To get more social shares for your posts, make it effortless for readers to share. Add social sharing buttons to your posts so readers can share with one click. When readers don’t have to do as much work, they’re more likely to share posts they like with their networks.
6. Publish Posts at the Right Times
Do you publish your blog posts whenever you finish writing them? That habit could be standing between you and the social shares your posts deserve. For maximum shareability, blog posts should be published when your audience is tuning in.
People read blogs throughout the day, but the highest percentage of users are reading in the morning. Seventy percent of users say they read blogs in the morning. Blog traffic usually peaks around 11 am, and drops off throughout the rest of the day. Monday is the highest traffic day for the average blog.
7. Optimize Posts for Social Media
Do your blog posts look attractive when they’re shared on social media? Many posts don’t. They appear as a plain link, and they don’t entice readers to click or share. To be shareable, your links should appear with a photo and an excerpt of your content.
It’s not hard to optimize your posts for social media. If you’re using WordPress, plugins like Yoast SEO can help you optimize your posts in a few minutes. You can set the default image and description you want associated with your post on social media. When readers share your post, it will stand out on their feeds, and their connections will be more likely to share it.
If your blog posts aren’t getting shared to social media sites, try these seven tips. Do you have any secret tips or tricks for getting your blog posts shared? Let us known in the comments section.
Jennifer Mitchell
Jennifer Mitchell is a business writer based in Canada. She specializes in content marketing, blogging, and social media marketing, and has a passion for helping businesses succeed.
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Thanks, Jennifer. I’ve saved and shared this article with a group I blog with in Maine.