Increase social shares on posts ~ 3 killer (UNTAPPED) ways!

Do you want to Increase social shares on your blog post? Ok I want to discuss 2 powerful yet untapped ways to help your readers share your articles.

We know social media is an unfailing channel to pull traffic to your blog posts. While you are encouraged to build a huge social media presence by growing your friends and followers, technology has given us multiple ways to tap into this traffic gold mine even with a proven weak social base.

There are well known methods to increase social shares on your articles. One of these is Influencer Marketing (also Influence Marketing). It allows you to dig deep into what others have done by simply tickling them into sharing your articles.

While Influence Marketing can generate immeasurable results, there are often hidden methods successfully used by some bloggers.

Traditionally, adding social media buttons to your blog increases sharing. These are different types and designs. While some themes like MyThemeShop themes come with inbuilt social sharing features, you will have to install additional plugins for most of the themes in the market.

Readers may just skip over those buttons and forget to share. So it’s recommended to ask them to share if they like the content.

Note however that readers don’t just tweet or share because you ask. Your article has to be interesting and shareable to cause them to share.

Here are 3 of these little known, some what neglected but highly effective ways to dominate social media;

1 Embedding social posts

Crazy right?

But this works exceptionally well for the top social media platforms. You can remarkably increase social shares by embedding Facebook Posts, Twitter Tweets, Google plus posts into your blog posts.

Here is how it goes for Facebook;

You may want to try out this embed code generator but the simplest way I have found is to click the Options Menu -> Embed Post to grab the code.

This should be done immediately after posting on your profile or fanpage

Once you click on Embed Post, grab the code and paste on the source view of your article.

This is a sample post I have embedded

The default width of the widget is 500pxl but if you have some coding knowledge, you can change that to fit your design. Maybe Facebook should give us an easy way to do this (or I just didn’t see it).

It is visibly clear from the Facebook embed above that your readers can easily like, comment and share your posts.

What about Google Plus?

Crazy simple too.

First, identify the post on Google+  you want to embed. Go to Options Menu -> Embed Post

Once you click to generate the Embed code, simply grab the code and paste on the source view of your article.

 Here is sample Google Plus embedded post:

 

You notice that your readers can comment, Plus and even follow you directly on your blog posts without having to switch to Google plus domain.

What about Twitter?

Twitter has also made it simple to embed Tweets on your blog posts. Simply identify the tweet you want to embed, click the Menu -> Embed Tweet.

 

Once you click to embed Tweet, grab the code as well and paste in the source view of your article.

Here is a sample embeded Tweet !

MyThemeShop Coupon Code ~ 68% discount code! – https://t.co/ZUiucf1hum — Contest Winners (@cwinnerscom) August 8, 2015

 

At this level, it is interesting to note that your readers can follow you, retweet your tweet, reply and add your tweet to their lists without leaving your blog.

Some key differences between theses social embeds

I noticed some difference between these networks. A common feature however is the fact that you can easily grab the code to embed

However, you cannot return to your Facebook profile to embed old posts. You may have to use their code generator. The Embed Post option disappear from old posts.

On Twitter and Google+, you can always return to old posts and grab the embed code easily.

Facebook allows you to adjust the width of the embed widget by changing some source code values. This is not the case with the other two networks.

2 – Shareable Quotes and Phrases.

One of the ways to increase social shares on your blog posts is to use plugins that allow your readers to easily tweet or share quotes and phrases embedded in articles.

As I write this post, there are good number of plugins to add tweetables to your posts. One of this is TweetDis.

NB: I recently wrote about this plugin so check out this post for details.

The problem I have with TweetDis is the fact that it only works with Twitter. I however suggested to Tim Soulo to include other networks like Facebook (shares) and Google +.

Here is a sample tweetable phrase powered by TweetDis:

TweetDis has a rich variety of themes and design. It has quite awesome level of flexibility. Check out my review for more.

3 – Reward your readers.

Everyone desires to be rewarded for an action. If you give access to an important reward to your readers who share your content on social media, you are definitely going to get more shares.

Today, we have tools like JustRetweet, EasyRetweet, PaywithaTweet, etc that allow you to pay your readers with a certain value when they carry out social actions on your blog posts.

Using Pay With A Tweet to spread the Word

This can be exceptionally powerful way to increase social shares on your pages and get the word out to social media for more traffic, sales and profit

With Paywithatweet, your readers will have to tweet or share your link before having access to another page where they get the reward.

This can be used to create an unending viral effect on your pages.  Simply, you may allow readers to tweet your link to unlock access to a discount code or free download page.

First, go to Pay With A Tweet and create a campaign

The form is actually simple. This tool supports up to 6 different social media networks. You notice that you set the message to be tweeted or shared, the url to along with it and of course where the reader will be redirected to after sharing.

This should be a hidden URL for free product download, coupon code or some premium content. Generally, search engines should be stopped from crawling such pages so that your content doesn’t get delivered to the public through natural search.

Once you create your campaign, you have two ways to link to it;

1. Copy the direct link and link to it from any webpage (a)
2. Simply grab the embed code and paste on your article source view (b).

Conclusion

These are some 3 smart ways to increase social shares on your blog posts. If you like this post, please share it on social media.

Do drop a comment and let me know what you think!