You take your content writing seriously. You want it to spread. You write great content, in fact, using humor, providing entertainment, and giving readers really solid information and tips. But your analytics is telling a depressing story. It is not getting the shares and the traffic you want. How can people be missing this great stuff you are writing and why are they not sending it on to their friends? Here are 5 things you need to make sure you are doing, if you don’t want your content fall off the planet, never to be seen again!
Provide Incentives to Share
You can have all of the great information in the world, and people might read it. But getting them to take that next step to share it requires an additional motivation. So, give it to them:
- Offer special deals. They can submit a photo that relates to the post, and you will put it up on your site if they share the post; offer a free e-guide or a discount coupon if they share
- Have a survey they can take and then share with others. Promise to publish the results on your social media pages and your website
- Hold a contest with a prize for the most shares
- Adopt a cause and agree to a certain monetary contribution for each share (1000 shares at 5 cents is still only $50.00). Promise to keep a running tabulation of the donation amount on your Facebook page.
Timing, Timing, Timing
Hopefully, you have done the research and you know when your demographic is online. If not, what are you waiting for? You need to schedule your publishing when they are going to see it. And there are some other general statistics you need to know and take advantage of:
- Wednesday afternoon after 5 p.m. is a good time for Twitter posts
- Saturday at noon is a good time for Facebook posts
- Women read posts before noon on Saturday and Sunday; men read them in the afternoons
- Young adults are rarely online before noon on Saturday or Sunday
So, how about you re-publishing the same post more than once? If, for example, your demographic is career women and your analytics says to post on Tuesday evenings, do that. But then post again when the general statistics say that women are on. You have nothing to lose, no extra time has been spent writing new content, and you have only more readers and shares to gain!
Those Sharing Buttons
The research is definitely in on this one. Your share buttons need to be placed at the bottom of the post or just to the left side toward the bottom. These are the best places to make it easy for a reader to just click
How Many Sharing Buttons? Research (Quick Sprout) also shows that the majority of readers will only click on one button, but that if they have too many choices, they may forego it altogether. So, using your own analytics, determine the three social media sites from which the most of your website traffic comes, and use those buttons only.
Make Your Posts Complete
Complete means many things. It means that whatever your topic is, you cover it fully, so that there is no need for a reader to then go somewhere else to find additional information. It’s nice to put links to authoritative sources in your posts, but here’s what can happen. You reader will link out to that source, get involved in reading what is there, and never come back to finish your post and then to share it. A better idea is to refer to that source in your post, provide the important information that has come from that source, and keep your reader on your post until the end.
Complete also means media and breaking up of content. You must have interesting stuff to offset the text. Add lots of pictures and infographics to break up the text; have lots of sub-headings and bullet points.
Lists still work although some content writers think they are already outdated. You are reading one now! Do use lists – they still work!
Re-Purpose – Re-Publish
There are a few things you need to keep in mind here.
- Tweet your posts at least twice at different times. You want to get as wide an audience as possible.
- Refer to the post a day or two, or even a week or two later on your social media page with a good “teaser” and a link. Those who missed it the first time can then link to it now, and you have increased your readership and perhaps some shares.
- Repurpose your content: Always try to do this. If it was primarily text with images initially, create an infographic and publish it as a new post; create a video in another week or two and publish it. The more use you can make of the same great content, the better!
Maybe you have picked up some new ideas about using your content writing and spreading it as far and wide as possible – that is always the “end game.”
