How to get your content shared

Whether you love or hate social sites like Twitter and Facebook, you have no choice but to use them. They are some of the most popular destinations on the web, and if you aren’t leveraging them, you are missing out on thousands of visitors a month.
Here are 10 ways you can get your content shared on the social web:

• Don’t place too many social icons on your site – the simplest way to get your content shared is to include social buttons within your content. You can easily do this through plugins like Sharebar, but if you give your readers too many options, they won’t click on any of the social buttons. Limit the number of social buttons to 3, if not 2.
• Not all social networks are equal – don’t just ask your readers to promote your content on all social sites. Only pick the ones you know your readers are on. In most cases, it is going to be Twitter and Facebook.
• Build up your social media accounts – blogs that get a lot of social media traffic usually also own powerful social media accounts. Invest time into building up your Twitter account and consider running Facebook ads to grow your fan page.
• Leverage content blockers – have you ever thought about putting a gate in front of your content that forces people to share it before they can read it? You can see this strategy in play here, and you can do the same thing on your site through WP Lead Magnet.
• Ask for a retweet – by including “please RT” within your tweet, you are four times more likely to get a retweet. This sounds simple, but it works.
• Build your network – through services like Tiberr, you can get hundreds of people to share your content on the social web.
• Ask your readers for help – at the end of your blog post tell your readers to share your content on a social network of your choice, but don’t do this too often as it will lose its effect. I generate 38% more social shares on average when I use this tactic at the end of a blog post.
• Run contests – through simple software solutions like Contest Domination, you can run contests and quickly increase the number of Facebook fans you have without spending a dollar on paid advertising.
• Don’t forget to participate – you can’t just reap the rewards without providing anything in return. To do well on the social web, you need to participate first and then promote your own sites. For example, you should be tweeting on a regular basis or publishing status updates on Facebook that aren’t related to your product or service.
• Collect emails – every time someone hits your blog, offer them a free ebook in exchange for an email address. Then, when you post new content, you can always email it out to your list. This is so effective that in the month of October, emails made up 21% of the traffic on Quick Sprout. Plus, email subscribers are 3.9 times more likely to share the content via the social web.