You have been spending time writing what you think are great contents for blog posts with the intent of getting a significant number of social media shares to drive traffic into your blog. You have included dozens of images and visual content to make it look beautiful and perfect.

But after doing content analysis, you realise that your post only managed to gain a few social media shares. You feel discouraged and heartbroken. But wait! Don’t be hard on yourself.

Thousands of blog posts are published daily, and competing for traffic and attention may not be an easy task. But all the same, you need those social shares to drive more traffic to your site. So, how do you get this done?

Take a look at the five content creation rules that will help you get more social media shares:

1. Understand the psychology behind social media sharing

Convincing followers to share your online content can be a daunting task — especially if you are new to this. So, how do you get them sharing your content in various social media platforms? The answer lies in comprehending the psychology of social media sharing.

Basically, this means considering the type of content people like to share and how they share it. A research carried out by the New York Times Insight Group found that people share online contents because:
  • They want to network and develop relationships.
  • They want to be more involved with the world.
  • They want to entertain and enrich the lives of other people.
  • They want to support a particular brand. It can either be a product, idea or an individual.
  • They want to express their gratitude towards the author of the content.
While going through this list, you will notice that, apart from supporting a brand, connecting with the outside world and getting the sense of being useful are the main reasons people want to share.

2. Create original content

The chances that you are the first person to cover a certain topic are really low. There are thousands of such posts previously written and published by other authors. However, you can enhance your creativity and come up with unique contents, or choose a new, more interesting angle that draws the attention of readers to increase the possibility of receiving more social media shares.

3. Focus on developing strong headlines

A good headline is as good as the article itself. It has to spark the interest of the audience and invite them to go through the content. Most readers are influenced by strong headlines while a few will go through your content without considering the headline.

With a good headline, your content is likely to attract more readers and consequently increase the number of social media shares. As such, a headline should be exciting, positive and speak volumes in just a few words.

4. Make your content actionable

Content creation forms a great part of the marketing strategies that should give the audience advice on how to apply the lessons learned from the content. Good content marketing should, therefore, give users a sense of how to apply those lessons in their day-to-day life.

So, when writing web content or just a blog post, provide your readers with the relevant tips on how to apply what they have just read from your post. As a result, your posts will be more likely to go viral because people like to share what they believe has an impact on the lives of others.

5. Include images and visual content to get more social media impressions

There is no doubt that visuals speak louder than words. The human mind is naturally attracted to images, and most readers will quickly go through the pictures and videos before even reading the content.

No matter how epic your content is, without images or visualised data, it is not likely to get a good number of social media shares compared to an average content with appealing images and interesting infographics. To further engage your readers, include visual content and images in your content and be sure to receive more comments, likes and social media shares.

Content creation forms a great part of our life, especially in the marketing field. It’s hard to avoid it because it helps us to engage, attract more traffic which almost always equals more potential customers for our business.

As such, social media engagement should be a continuous task involving a series of audience analysis to understand exactly what they need. So, take time to create great content for your audience then work out on how to increase the social media shares.

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*Image courtesy of Vecteezy