5 Ways to Get More People Sharing Your Social Media Content

As a Small Business Owner, you’re probably familiar with the feeling of frustration when you spend all day creating some great Social Media content, post it and then wait for someone to react to it… but no one does.

Then the questions start flying around in your head: what went wrong? Was your content not good enough? Are people not interested in your products? Is Social Media really even worth your time? It’s frustrating and can even be a little soul destroying, we get it.

The question of how to get more people reacting to and sharing your Social content is one that stumps most Small Business Owners, but before you get carried away in a whirl of Social Media Sadness, listen up!

In this post, we’re going to share with you the best 5 ways that you can optimise your Social Media content to increase your Social Shares, which will ultimately get more people talking about your Business Online.

It’s always in your best interest to do your research before proceeding with your Social Media content strategy and content calendar to ensure that you are posting relevant content. Make sure you do some solid research on what’s trending Online, as this is the kind of engaging content that will really catch people’s attention and get them talking.

Whether it’s content for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or multiple social media platforms, by analysing what people are responding to and watching your competitors, you’ll be better placed to create content that is relevant and “of the moment” on various platforms, which is a sure-fire way to gain traction with your audience.

Remember that these Social Platforms are made for sharing, and people love to share relevant and of-the-minute content, so they can appear “in the know” to their friends and followers. By filling your Social feeds with relevant, up to date content, you’re giving yourself the best chance of increasing your Social Shares.

If you’re a little stumped for content ideas, there are many content creation tools and social media marketing platforms that you can use, such as Buzzsumo and Sprout Social, which allow you to monitor the performance of content on different Social Media platforms. These marketing resources will provide you with some inspiration for your next topic, but will ensure that you never duplicate any existing content. Remember that it’s vital to be original!

Visual information is processed much faster by the human brain than text, which is why Social Media users have gradually become slowly more obsessed with visually-based content, no matter the social media platform. It’s easy to digest, engaging and can tell a story with one glance. As a Small Business Owner, you can quality content that is optimised for Social Sharing by taking advantage of this desire for imagery.

This shift towards the visual can be seen through the popularity of the social media platform Instagram. And it’s not just Instagram that’s pushing the pictures, so are multiple other social media platforms! Statistics show that:

• Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images.
• Organic Facebook engagement is highest on posts with videos and photos.
• Infographics are “liked” and shared on social media 3 times more than any other type of content.

This proves that the use of visuals when creating  content, not only significantly boosts engagement, but will also drive your Social Shares through the roof.

There are Online Tools you can use to create aesthetic images for your Social Media, one of the most popular being Canva. This user-friendly tool provides beautiful templates that you can customise to create content that’s appropriate for your Business and will stand out on social media platforms.

When we talk about visuals in digital marketing, the mind immediately thinks of still images, but when it comes to social media usage it’s important to remember that video content is also very effective in engaging users Online, and could be just the social media marketing strategy that you are looking for  that will help you score more Social Shares.

Unlike pictures however, there are a lot of elements to be considered when creating videos for Social Media. You need to capture a lot in a short space of time and ensure the quality of your video is high enough so that it looks professional and authoritative.

You also need to have something to say, no one is going to want to watch a video that has no value to anyone. Aim to provide educational content in your brand voice that is relevant to your industry, target audience , social media networks and brand identity. This will make your videos more shareable on social channels, as people are always searching for entertaining and educational content that they can pass onto their friends.

Creating short, engaging videos for your social media channels is easier than you think with the use of tools like Animoto and Lumen5. These platforms provide templates and stock footage to help you create professional-looking videos in no time.

It pays to remember that your target market won’t be highly active on Social Media 24 hours a day. For this reason, you need to know when your audience is most active, so you can create a content calendar to reach the most people and achieve the highest possible share and repost rate.

To figure out when your target audience is most active, you can use social media analytics tools on your business accounts to gather platform data from your own posts on different platforms and see which times and days have received the most engagement from your followers. There are also lots of Online resources such as Sprout Social which can be helpful in helping you determine the best times to post for your specific industry, so you don’t have to go making any wild guesses!

Content creation tools, such as Sprout Social, Later and SocialPilot, are all helpful when it comes to planning your Social Media strategy and content calendar, as they allow you to schedule posts and create months-worth of content well in advance. These social media management tools also ensure that you’re not awake at 3am trying to target your audience with posts when they’re most likely to share your content!

Timing counts for a lot on when creating a social media marketing plan, so make sure you use a social media analytics tool to find the best time to post and social media management software to create a content calendar to ensure that you are posting at the time that’s best for your Business, so that your content will be noticed and shared.