8 Ways to Optimize Your Blog Content for Social Media

Social media is a quite valuable tool for promoting blog content. In this age of the social web, getting people to notice your content is like asking them to spot a needle in a haystack. With thousands of posts per minute on social networking sites, it is a bit difficult for audience to find your content. One question must be popping in your mind that how can I cut through the noise and make my blog content better for social media? After in-depth research work, I have discovered efficient ways that will definitely make your content better for social media and help in effective social media marketing strategy.

Tips for writing valuable content for social media

For writing quality content to promote your business, 80/20 rule is followed by most business owners. 80/20 rule means 80% of the content you post on social media should be entertaining or informational, and 20% of content should be about business promotions, updates and events. This content marketing strategy is popular because if you share quality and informative content, your followers will be more willing to engage with your business-related posts.

It is easy to create 20% of business-related content, but the main problem comes when you write that 80% informative content. I have mentioned eight important points that you can consider to develop your content plan:

1. Know your target audience:

Before planning blog content, you should know your target audience and get answer of few questions like:

• What questions do your customers ask about your industry?
• What topics of interest do your customers share in common with them?
• What problems do your customers have that you can solve?

Answer of these questions will definitely help you in writing relevant and informative content and engage your audience to read your content.

2. Magnetize your article titles

By magnetizing your blog title, I mean it is important to make the titles unique so that it can pull people into your content. Do not write boring titles and make sure that the headlines you use are interesting, eye-catching, and clearly indicate what the content will be about.

Keep in mind that your article title should be short, crisp and catchy. Certain social media websites, like Twitter, limit the number of characters that can be used in a post. When people share articles, they often like to include their own commentary with it.

3. Give your content life with photos, graphics and videos

According to MDG Advertising, blog posts consist with images receive a whopping 94 percent more views than those without. Therefore, it is quite necessary to add fascinating, yet meaningful and informative photos in your content. You can find free photos on websites like CreativeCommons.org or Compfight.com and if you want to purchase photos, you can go to CanStockPhoto.com or Getty Images.

People love behind-the-scenes glimpses into other peoples’ lives, which is also true in business promotion content. If you writing business related content, you can share inner workings of your business’s life with photos and videos that give followers a better sense of your staff, your inspirations and your process. It is also a great way to share your content in Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and other visually-oriented social channels.

4. Add fascinating meta-descriptions

When you share a blog post on social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+, they automatically pull in a description of the post. Most sites generate this description from the URL’s meta-description. These meta-descriptions are also very helpful for social media optimization, though they have no longer use in search engine optimization. Make sure that each blog post, web page, and landing page includes an enticing meta-description to attract social media users to check out your content.

5. Add social sharing buttons

As per recent study from BrightEdge Technologies, sites that include social sharing buttons generate 7x more mentions than those that do not include these buttons. If you add social sharing buttons for sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+, it will encourage your website visitors to share your content in social media. You can add these buttons to every landing page, blog article, web page, and other piece of content you create.

If you want people to share your content, you should position social share buttons right where any reader will find them. I typically like to put these social sharing buttons at the top or on the side (scrolling with the content) so they are hard to miss.

6. Create meaningful and strong quotes within the content

When you have something meaningful or interesting to say, you can make it easy for the readers to share the quote by offering a “click to tweet” link. This is one of the best ways to optimize your blog post. As this trick does not require a lot of work for the audience and it easily draws attention to the sharing option, readers are more likely to tweet your post. You can do this following ways:

• Go to ClicktoTweet.com and create your tweet. Generate and copy your link to incorporate it into your content.
• You can install Click to Tweet by Todaymade plugin onto your WordPress website. In the CMS, you can click on the Twitter icon in edit bar. After that, input the text you want people to tweet, and the plugin will create a box with your input text in it and a “Click to Tweet” link.

These quotes are not only helpful for getting audience to tweet your content, but also can be used as a marketing tool to capture readers’ attention.

7. Include a Call-to-Action

It is one of the effective ways to increase exposure of blog content on social media. You can ask people to share your content, but do not simply say, “Please share my post!” Instead, you should connect with your readers and make them want to share your blog post by focusing on how they feel or have felt reading your piece of content.

You can tell your reader exactly what to do by mentioning which social media platform to share on so you do not leave them with too many options. Here are some good examples calls-to-action:

• Loved these thoughts? Let everyone know these thoughts by liking this post on Facebook
• Do you share same views? Tell the world by sharing this post on Facebook
• Rise to the challenge and help spread the word by sharing this post on Facebook

8. Showcase Customer Quotes and Accolades

Social media networks are one of the best forums for word-of-mouth recommendations. If you are getting customers’ feedback via online review sites, email, or in person, you can highlight these comments on social media (if your customers are not sharing their feedback there already).

In addition to this, you can brag about accolades and an award you receive from other organizations and tag those organizations in your posts that will give you opportunity to be re-shared as well, which can get your business even more exposure.

The Bottom Line

Put some of these strategies to the test and I am sure you will see your engagement metrics improve in no time! Just try out these tips and let us know how these tips are able to make your blog content better. The possibilities for successful social media marketing through content are endless. If you want to enhance social media optimization of your content in a professional and effective manner that too in less time, I recommend you to hire experienced social media experts.