When it comes to content marketing, social sharing can be the key to getting your brand's voice out there.
A chain reaction of people sharing with their friends — especially if someone influential shares it — is a big part of what makes something go viral.
Sure, true virality might be a pipe dream.
But you can still get quite a bit of traffic due to the right people sharing your post.
It's a great way to promote your brand and build the authority and trust you need to connect with your customers.
One way to encourage this social sharing is to make it as easy as possible for your readers.
And the best way to do that is to simply add social media share buttons, along with a CTA asking them to share with their friends.
If someone has to copy paste a link, type out the headline, and worry about the character limit in order to successfully tweet your blog post, they're a lot less likely to bother with it than if all they need to do is click a simple little button.
In a recent blog post, Neil Patel explains how you can easily start implementing social share buttons for more shares, more clicks, more traffic, and ultimately, more sales.
CTAs and social media share buttons
If you really want people sharing your content on social media, you need to understand the concept of friction.
At its core, friction is the thing that gets between your user’s actions.
There are plenty of definitions for friction, but what’s important for you to understand is that it’s the enemy.
Anything that gets between your audience and the actions you want them to take is going to end up being something you want to get rid of.
The harder it is for your audience to take action, the less likely they are to take it.
If you want to increase the chances that your audience will take a particular action, try to remove as much friction as possible between where your audience is and where you want them to be.
Enter the call-to-action (CTA).
[image source: Neil Patel]
A truly efficient CTA revolves around your ability to guide your readers and ask them to do something specific.
The more specific the ask, the more likely they are to actually do it.
The beauty of the CTA is that it doesn’t just have to focus on sales.
There are few different types of actions that brands want their consumers to take.
Sales are obviously one of them, but there are other types of conversions like e-book downloads and email newsletter sign-ups that benefit your business without directly contributing to sales.
For the purposes of our example, we’re going to talk about a CTA that’s all about getting users to share your content on social media.
In order to pull that off, your CTA should be a few things.
- Concise
- Clear
- One step
By ensuring that your CTA is straightforward and not convoluted, you end up with a CTA that clearly shows your audience what their next step should be.
I’m also a firm believer in the one-step CTA because multiple steps tend to complicate things unnecessarily.
Since this is about content, it’s likely that your CTA will be at the end of your blog content or video content.
No matter which you’re using, keep in mind that your CTA is more about making a value proposition than it is about presenting people with an ad.
People are going to need a reason to share your content.
It can be something as simple as, “share this with someone thinks they’re always right,” or, “share this with any of your friends headed to college”.
CTAs may not be subtle, but they’re the solution to friction when it comes to increasing social media sharing.
Another important tool that you should be using to increase the number of shares you get on social media is the social media share button dashboard.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve visited pages that ask for social media shares at the end of their articles only to find that they don’t have any social media share buttons on their page.
This is one of the easiest ways to encourage people to share your content on social.
The buttons basically remove any of the barriers between the user and the action.
You can find more creative ways to encourage people to share your content over at Neil Patel's blog.
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