A business that’s not on social media is like a plant hidden in the wilderness. Social media presence is important for any business, big or small.
“There are 3.5 billion active social media users which is 45% of the population”
However, just an online presence won’t be enough in today’s competitive business world. It is like downloading an app and not using it for your benefit. A business must make the most of the popular social media sites to its visibility. Nowadays, spreading the word about your business is of pivotal importance. People need to know that your business exists and the best way to do it is through social media sharing.
But wait! What exactly is social media sharing?
Social media sharing is the best way to take your content to your target audience. It helps in expanding the reach of your business. A social share is an organic form of promoting your business. With the right strategy in place, you can motivate people to share your article link, infographic, image, or other marketing material to reach more potential buyers. The more people you reach, the more leads you can add to your sales pipeline.
Social sharing is very powerful. Once the post is shared, it is viewed by an entirely new audience. If the content is helpful and compelling, it might go even further into a wider network providing you with more opportunities.
Why is social media sharing important?
Nowadays, most businesses have leveraged the power of social media sharing to increase traffic, improve website ranking, boost product visibility, and acquire more customers.
The benefits of social sharing are numerous if the right tactics are applied.
Let’s look at the importance of social media sharing in business and how it can be beneficial.
Increases brand recognition
Don’t you share an informative piece of content or a quirky quote with your networks?
Motivating people to hit the share button has helped many small businesses gain recognition.
For instance, Maes Beer. They planned a clever campaign on Facebook. They offered a free barrel of beer to anyone with the last name “Maes” on the condition that they would share this with 20 of their friends. This received a lot of traction across their Facebook page. Over 7000 people changed their surname to Maes on Facebook. Maes beer received over 75,000 Facebook likes in a single day and around 50,000 visits to their Facebook page in six weeks.
This is what social sharing can do to your business. It is an excellent way to introduce the masses to your product. Social sharing helps in making your brand recognizable and more accessible to your target audience. People across the world use social media; that’s a lot of potential buyers you could reach simply by using the right social sharing strategy.
You get more opportunities to convert
Your post can generate a lot of leads if it piques the interest of the target audience. The more your post is shared, the more opportunities you will get to convert. This helps in increasing sales, that too, without spending a fortune on marketing. All you need to do is make sure your posts or campaigns have all the essential elements to capture the potential buyer’s interest.
Build trust and credibility
Social media sharing helps in building trust and credibility. Customers trust products that are used or liked by people they know. Social sharing helps in painting a picture that you are a trustworthy name in the industry. People won’t hesitate in approaching and buying from you when they know that many others are buying from you and are satisfied using your product. However, make sure that message you share is true. Do not make promises you cannot fulfill later.
It helps in link building
Social sharing helps in link building, which is very important for any business. The more backlinks a website receives, the more credible it appears. Google prefers links that are built organically. So once you get in the good books of Google and get the top ranking, you won’t face much trouble in getting traffic for your site.
Indexing of web pages
Do you not content that is shared a lot gets indexed a lot faster on search engines. This is where social sharing plays a major role. With an effective social sharing strategy, you could reduce the indexing time to almost 50% compared to the normal time taken by GoogleBot. The content indexed in less time is found quicker. So, invest some time in social sharing.
Increases the discoverability of keywords
Every business aims to be on the top results of Google. Social sharing is an easy way to get there. A social profile that keywords in the description and URL have high chances to appear when someone searches for those keywords, and Search engines often take the name, URL, and bio into consideration. Make sure that the posts you share on social media sites have similar keywords to that on your sites and landing pages. This simple strategy could give you a higher ranking than expected.
How to do it right- best practices for social sharing
You just saw how important social sharing is for your business. Let’s see how to do it in the right way to get the expected results.
Find the social network used by the target audience
First of all, you need to be clear with your buyer persona. Once you know who your target audience is, find which sites do they use more frequently. If you target SMEs and large enterprises, you should focus on sharing more posts on LinkedIn and Twitter. Facebook is useful for B2C, where you can have a little casual tone to engage the consumers.
Make sure content is short, compelling, and meaningful
There is a plethora of content flowing over the social media site. Not every content get likes and shares. Your content should be interesting and meaningful if you want people to share with their network.
Do not go to write long tales and nobody has the time to read it. Wear the creative hat and try to make your posts engaging. Go beyond marketing blurb and discounts; try to help your target audience with informative content that they would like to read and share it with their networks.
Make things easier for more shares
Shorten the links and easily share it on your social media sites. Put the social sharing icons in the right place to stimulate more clicks. Make your social sharing accessible on your mobile as most people nowadays use their smartphones to access social media channels. Your social sharing icons should work well on the phone, as well.
Track link and retarget effectively
Don’t share links and forget them. Keep tracking them regularly to optimize your marketing campaigns for better results. Retarget the people who showed interest in your content. Create a custom audience and retarget them for more shares. A smart tool like RocketLink can help you in tracking your links and retargeting people who clicked your link.
Consistently share on multiple channels
Be very active in social sharing, and do not just stick to one social media channel. Use different channels and forms of content to engage your target audience. For more traffic and conversion, social posting should be routine. Even make sure you maintain consistency while sharing your content.
Ask people to share content to share your content
Sometimes you even need help to take your content to the masses. Have special campaigns where you are ready to feature someone in your blog and give some freebies. For instance, you can give a free sample for people who convince 40 others to share your post. In this way, you can reach more people. You can even have a pop up that says, “if you liked this post, share it on Facebook.”
Try to add humor
Giving your target audience a good chuckle increases the chances of social shares. People normally don’t laugh alone; if they find something funny, they share it with their network to spread some smile. So try to add funny images or make the content a bit humorous to encourage shares.
Look at the example of Charmin below. They have smartly aligned humor with their product.
Conclusion
Social sharing is a great way to reach more potential buyers. However, social sharing needs a lot of effort. You need to ensure the content is short and engaging; the images are perfect; the links are shortened, etc. Besides, you need to ensure that your post content on social media at the right time. Explore different time slots when your target audience is active.
It is surely not easy to get a maximum social share, but it isn’t an impossible task as well. I am sure you’ve shared a lot of content with your network. Ponder over what encouraged you to click the share button. Try to include the same elements in your content as well to get more shares.
