With over 2 billion users across the major social networks, it's no wonder so many brands and businesses are focusing their efforts on social media marketing. As bloggers continue to generate millions of new articles every day and anxiously wait and pray that they rank organically in the search results, it would be much more and effective for them to focus their efforts on the fast-paced world of viral and free traffic through social media.
In this article, we're going to highlight some of the most exciting and effective ways to get users from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other social networks back to your site. Millions of blogs, brands and businesses are already implementing these methods, and now it's time for you to do the same.
Expert Roundup Posts and Interviews
One of the best ways to gain attention, backlinks and social shares to your site is through the use of expert round-up posts and interviews. Round-up posts are a collection of experts who share their opinion on an individual question or topic. These work extremely well in the blogging and online marketing space, as everyone is already quite tech savvy and willing to share content they are featured in. The same holds true for text/audio based interviews - in most cases, the individuals you are interviewing, will also share your content with their audience as well.
Add Social Sharing to Your Site
This one is dead simple, but I'm still amazed at how many blogs still don't have social sharing buttons on their sites. For the many sites that do implement social sharing, about half of them are still doing it wrong. When running social sharing buttons on your blog, make sure they are easy to find, at the top and bottom of all content, and also link back or mention your own social media profile.
Create a Shareable Infographic
Infographics are one of the best ways to share information that gets read. As much as everyone would like to learn more about a specific topic or industry, reading a lot of text isn't always appealing. With infographics anyone can quickly scan through a lot of data, without feeling overwhelmed or bored in the process. Infographics are fun and one of the best ways to increase social sharing on any site.
Run a Social Sharing Contest
Everyone loves to get something for free and especially when all it takes is a simple click of a button. Sites that run their own social sharing contests usually see a huge increase in shares, while also building their mailing lists in the process. With so many different applications and services out there to run a simple social contest, it's no wonder why they are being seen all over the place.
Enable Content Locking in Your Posts
As bloggers and content generators, we know the value of creating great content, but we also know the value of not giving everything away for free. Content locking is one of the best ways to give away great content on your blog for free, but to unlock the best secrets, tips and juicy sections of your site, requiring your audience to share your content is key. With content locking this is all possible and much easier to setup than you might think.
Now that you've seen how easy and effective some of these methods are to set-up, it's time for you to implement these same practices into your existing blog, brand and business. Everyone loves getting attention, something for free and value in the process... make sure your blog is taking advantage of each of these promotions.
Main image via Shutterstock