We all spend a lot of time developing content but if you can’t get anyone to share it in order to drive traffic back to your website, it could all be a waste of time. If you want to get people to share you latest blog posts you must understand why people hit “like” or click “retweet.” You cannot trick users into sharing anything. Readers are the regulators of their own feeds and they take their time to cater it to their interests. It is therefore important to understand every bit of content that different people share and the reasons for doing so more frequently.
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The Psychology of Sharing
The psychology of sharing is simple. You must make the reader trust you before they will share any of your content. No one will share anything that will tarnish their names or make them look bad. Take note: If your site is sketchy, littered with ads, pushy or uninformed, you will not to win the trust of most readers. Give value to your content and develop a user-friendly site structure, and showcase the social proof by showing how readers will benefit from your content. These strategies will win the trust of your site viewers.
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Optimize Your Site and Content for Mobile Devices
When you look at your site analytics, you will realize that about 20 percent of the traffic results from mobile devices. It is important to optimize your site as well as its content for mobile sharing in order for your visitors to share easily on the go.
A good example is having a share bar that enables people to share the content across several channels. While browsing across your blog content with a mobile device, it should show a share bar or button somewhere on the screen. That makes the site content obvious and very easy to share. When you can access a site from your mobile device, you make the sharing experience user-friendly.
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Make Snippets That can be Tweeted
Incorporate links such as “Click To Share” and “Click to Tweet” so that your visitors can share your content on Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms quickly. A share link should be included below the posts, or at the end, to allow the reader to sign into the social networks to create additional (optional) text before sharing. The links can allow any reader who gets inspired to share it on other networks for more people to read it. It is advisable to prepopulate tweets so that it becomes easy for visitors to share any content they choose from your site on Twitter.
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Focus on Creating Curiosity, Surprise and Amazement
If you expect your readers to share your content, it’s not enough to just write a helpful article. Other than social currency, emotion is another major pillar of sharing. The content you post to a blog or a website needs to create some emotional effect on readers to increase the chances of sharing it. There are certain elements that that will make content worth sharing, particularly when it is thought provoking, unveils surprises or amazes the reader with new information.
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Don’t Plead Shares, Simply Ask
Asking your site visitors to share the contents is an easy task and can rapidly increase your social engagement by about 40 percent or more.
You should ask readers to share on your social media networks or even in the post itself. Add a call to action button at the end of the post. You can also ask through email updates or simply mention names of people and let them know about it.
About the Author:
Chirag Patel writes for GO-Globe Web Technologies, a leading website design company in Hong Kong having years of experience in designing custom design websites, web application development and Intranet solutions. Follow him on Twitter: @pcchiragj
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