These days, there is no discounting the importance of sharing information and content that is posted on your site. In fact, it is quite vital for the success of your company, website, as well as your brand. Without your visitors being able to share your content around the web, your site is not tapping into its potential. While sharing can be done by site owners and operators a truly functional website has organic visitors and fans that come to the site and share the content that they love but because they want to do it.
Unfortunately this is easier said than done. Getting content that people actually want to share is quite difficult. One of the largest obstacles to overcome is to provide users with an easy way of sharing the content. If it is difficult for visitors to share the things they like then obviously they won’t do it. In order to improve your share-ability, try some of these techniques to improve sharing on your website:
Make sharing easy
First and foremost, make it easy to share. This process takes a couple of steps and requires a couple of elements, firstly make it easy to sign into your site and leave comments. If readers have to navigate a lengthy log-in element before they can leave comments your site will likely suffer in terms of interaction. People are lazy, let’s face it. If, however, you absolutely need a sign-in at least make it compatible with other social sharing sites, such as Facebook or Twitter. That way, users can simply log-in with pre-existing accounts.
The next step is to make sharing buttons on your website easily visible under and above each post. Ideally there should be sharing buttons above the fold. Use traditional colors as well, as that will help visitors easily recognize buttons they can use to share your content. Insure you have sharing capabilities for Facebook, Twitter, G+, and whatever else may be applicable to your audience.
Sharing increases with interesting content
Your voice, your content, your perspective is what is keeping visitors coming back to your site, it is also what gets your visitors to share your content. Thus, you must insure that your content hits the right notes, it has be in line with those who are visiting your site. Some things work really well in terms of keeping your visitor’s interest; numbered lists are one of these techniques. This simple layout is what people want to read and share – it’s easy.
Utilize Photos
A page without pictures just looks bland and uninhabited. It’s always easier to get people involved and sharing when your content includes relevant and beautiful pictures with each post. Make things visually appealing. Though, one must be careful, insure you have permission to use the pictures you’re putting online. You don’t want to steal photos from someone else.
What about Videos?
People like videos. They come in all shapes and sizes but two are the most heavily shared online, those two are informative videos and funny videos. Either of these will increase shares and traffic to your site. Informative videos are easier to make and bring in more serious visitors to your website. But funny visitors make your visitors laugh and establish a connection with enjoyable feelings and your site itself. Consider what you and your brand are going after before choosing what kind of video’s you want your site to display.
Make your Site Mobile Friendly
Mobile is a fast growing industry. More and more people are accessing sites using their mobile devices. Thus, keep up with the trend. Insure your pages are mobile friendly and can be easily accessed by smart phones and tablets. Many hosting sites already offer mobile additions of websites, but this isn’t the case for all of them. If your hosting service doesn’t, consider moving to one that does.
There are a variety of ways to improve the shareability of your website. But these easy steps can make a big difference both in the short and long term as far as increasing overall effectiveness for your brand in the social sphere. With a little luck, in no time at all, your site will be visited frequently by flocks of interested and passionate visitors willing to share your content all over the web!
This is a guest post by Charlie Thomas, part time blogger and full time technology fanatic. Entranced by innovations in social media and the whole industry, I don’t see this passion dying out any time soon! Charlie is writing on behalf of Hubblr.