People love social media. And they love to share things on social media that makes them look good. This could be anything from appearing funny, intelligent, socially aware, or politically up-to-date. So, creating useful content that’s highly shareable is a great way to get your business in front of more eyeballs. And, of course, you have to make social sharing easy for people.
So, how do you do that? How can you make it easy for people to share your content on social media? If you’re using WordPress, there are several different types of plug-ins you can use. Here are some examples of plugins that I have found work well.
Social Sharing Buttons
The first group is the most obvious. Install social sharing buttons. I have already talked about this in detail in another article, “Why you should use social sharing tools”. But here is the gist of it: instead of having your readers copy and paste the URL (web address) of your article in a Facebook post or into a tweet, they simply click a button.
These share/tweet/pin buttons usually bear the logos of social media platforms and once you click them, a post for the social media platform gets created. This post usually contains at least the headline of the post, the link and usually an image. In some instances (Facebook and LinkedIn for example), you even get a short preview of your article. You can still add some individual text to your post, but all the hard lifting has been done for you.
Some good example of free social sharing plugins, that are also customisable are Sumo (which I use) or WP Social Sharing.
Click to Tweet
Another group of plugins that work really well are Twitter specific. A Click to Tweet plugin will insert a quote from your article that you can specify into your text. It usually creates a box so that it stands out and your readers are invited to share it. When clicked, it creates a customisable tweet that gets published to your reader’s Twitter account. These plugins are particularly good for sharing memorable quotes or soundbites. Here’s the one I use.
Use a Click To Tweet plugin to make it easy for your readers to share your content. Click To TweetMy plugin is called Better Click to Tweet and is free and super easy to customise. Another one I’d recommend is TweetDis. It’s got a wide variety of options.
As with many things, it’s remembering to add a click-to-tweet box into your text every time you blog. Installing alone will not do the trick.
Over to you
What are you going to implement this week? As a minimum I recommend you install social sharing buttons. Once installed, they provide fit and forget technology. You can just leave them, and they’ll sit there for you, ready for your readers to share your content.
If you have found this article useful, please use my social sharing buttons and share this article to LinkedIn. Thank you!
