Bloggers Being Social

When it comes to exposing yourself (talking about your blog here) to as many people as possible in order to generate the traction most of us are looking for when it comes to seeing our wonderfully witty posts go viral, it’s important that you’ve actually done the legwork for your readers so that they can easily share the content if they feel it’s worthy and of some benefit to their audiences.

Install the social buttons

So often I come across great content during my web travels, and it always amazes me when there is no way for me to share it with my readers other than manually trying to do it myself (which rarely happens). It takes just a few minutes to get your site setup with a plugin or small piece of code, but the resulting payoff in traffic will be well worth it.

Multiple Instances

Don’t be afraid to use more than one setup when it comes to social buttons. A floating share button on the side, tied in with a “like”, and Retweet button within the post will increase the likelihood of someone seeing it and clicking on it. Another popular spot is at the end of the post, but don’t go crazy and offer your reader’s ten different networks or you’ll end up with zip!

Test the process yourself

Because we spend so much time on our sites, we don’t really see it the way other visitors do. We always use the same browser, set to the same monitor size, and generally travel the same routes within our blog and navigation system.

Check out the process from a friend or colleague’s computer to see that everything is working the way you think it is. It’s surprising how many people discover glaring mistakes on their websites or within part of the system only to realize it’s been that way for months or even years.

If you have a community built up, you could ask them to help out. Chances are you’ll get some great feedback from people using everything from a laptop to an IPhone and you’ll be able to use that data to refine, and enhance the visitor experience even further.

Share the wealth

You’re hoping to entice your readers to click and share your content but are you sharing theirs? If I see someone making a point of sharing my posts you better believe that I’m going to head over and return the favor. Its reader’s like that that makes the difference between an OK blog, and a great one.

Join Tribes or Communities

Retweet groups are quickly becoming a thing of the past now that places like Triberr exist. Make it a point to track down and join some tribes that fit in well with your niche. The members within these places are quite friendly and are usually more than willing to help a fellow blogger to grow.

Raise your standard of writing

We all have those posts we simply can’t believe we wrote ourselves. They seem to have that something extra that just makes them “pop” and traffic, and comments just seem to go through the roof on those posts. It likely isn’t a “real” mystery here, but simply a case of you getting some stellar content out there for your audience to see and share.

By raising the standards with which you hold yourself accountable and by expecting more from yourself that anyone else could ever demand you’ll start to see something amazing happening. People will take notice. The better the content, the more likely it is to be shared, and if you’re lucky enough to have someone truly influential hit that Retweet button you’ll see what true engagement really means.

End with a call to action

It’s a good idea to end each of your blog posts with a call to action. I don’t recommend trying for more than one, so if you’re focus is to get your content shared with as wide an audience as possible don’t be afraid to ask for it! The reason I say don’t ask for more than one thing (comment, share, opt in, etc.) is because in actuality you’ll end up with the reader taking no action at all.

Please be kind, rewind er.. hit one of the share buttons!