Social media marketing is all about sharing content. If your content isn't shared, either by you or by your audience, then there's not much difference between what you are doing and the traditional, one-way mass media communication that prevailed during the golden age of broadcast advertising. The whole point about social media is to get people to promote your business by word-of-mouth.
Why Sharing Matters
The effort to get people to share on social media is more than an ego-driven metric. When people share the content you post there are tangible advantages and benefits for your business.
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Sharing expands your reach exponentially. This is what happens when your content goes "viral."
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It has been demonstrated that people tend to believe those whom they choose to follow. That's why they follow them in the first place; they trust the people they follow and expect them to come up with content that is either useful or entertaining.
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Sharing boosts people's awareness of your brand and your products.
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Sharing keeps people within your sales funnel. There is really no way for you to exactly know where prospects are within your funnel. But when you put out great content, it acts as a magnet that keeps people coming back to you, keeps you top-of-mind, and gets more people to the top of your funnel while increasing their chances of making it through and out the bottom as paying customers.
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Sharing leads to action. The more people you get involved in an on-going dialogue, the higher the chance that more people will click on your call-to-action (CTA) button.
How to Get People to Share
Now that you know how important it is to get people to share your content, here are a few ways you can accomplish this.
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Be Happy. Research shows that happy, funny and joyful subjects resonate better with people. If you tend to share negative posts, chances are your audience will not want to pass it on.
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Ask and You Shall Receive. Just go ahead and ask people to share your posts. Nicely, of course. Twitter keeps reminding us that when people ask others to retweet their content, up to 51% actually share the tweet with their followers.
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Paint a Thousand Words. Pictures always reel them in. Always. The human brain is wired to pay close attention to visual stimuli and people always stop scrolling through the timeline or newsfeed when they come across a visually compelling image.
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It's All in the Head(line). Write strong, intriguing, attention-grabbing headlines that grab your readers' attention. Just be careful to make sure the rest of your content delivers what your headline promises.
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Make a List. There's something about lists; people love to share them with their friends. People are especially drawn to numbers, particularly when followed by compelling copy. "5 Powerful Ways to Get People to Share Your Content", for example, will surely attract readers who are looking for ways to improve their social media posts.
- Reciprocate when you can. If a fellow niche-mate shares your ideas and has similar or complimenting content - return the favor by posting some of their content once in a while too.