How To Get Hundreds Of Social Media Shares Per Blog Post

Having a good social media strategy can take an unknown blog with little traffic to an elite blog with hundreds of thousands of visitors every month.

The questions is, how do you take a blog to a whole new level using the power of social media without burning through all your cash? Because I think we all know how expensive advertising can get.

How To Get Hundreds Of Social Media Shares Per Blog Post

1. Make High-Quality Articles

If no one thinks your content is any good, why would they share it with their friends or anyone else? You wouldn't either, would you?

Make sure your content is always top-notch before your publish it and try to share it on social media.

Here are a few ways to know your article is high-quality:

• It doesn't have too many huge words that only a rocket scientist would understand. Check the Flesch Reading Ease Test to know how readable it is.
• It doesn't have gigantic, intimidating paragraphs. Don't try even try to tell me you look at 2,000 word paragraphs and are the least bit excited about reading them. According to Buffer the ideal length of a paragraph is 40-55 characters.
• The post is in-depth with at least 1,600 words. For more on content length and SEO, SerpIQ breaks it down. But, don't write more if it will hurt your quality.
• Use specific data within your posts and back them up with the sources of your information. Blog's like Quicksprout have made a name from just backing up data from the sources they used.

2. Use Attention-Grabbing Headlines

Your content quality is EXTREMELY important, but to get people to read it in the first place, you need a GREAT headline. Spend some time crafting the perfect one.

Here are a few headlines that did really well on my blog:

• How To Brand Yourself As An Expert In Your Field In 10 Steps
• 56 Blogging Communities For Getting Your Blog Discovered
• 50 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read
• How To Think Like A Billionaire And Make History
• How To Get 100,000 Blog Visitors A Month

A pattern you will find with these headlines is they have either one of two things: a number or “How To”. If you make an effort to include one those in most of your headlines, you could boost your blog traffic and shares by quite a bit.

3. Images

Images are becoming more and more popular on the internet. In fact, according to Jeff Bullas, articles with images get 94% more total views than ones without them. 94%! That's amazing!

You should not just be using one image per blog post though (especially on those lengthy ones), because you would be giving up lots of potential traffic and shares.

According to a study by Blog Pros, there is at least one image for every 350 words on the top 100 highest ranking blogs on the internet.

I would say you should remember this study next time you write a blog post because modeling after the top 100 ranked blogs in the world isn't usually a bad idea.

Not only that, but put yourself in the reader's shoes. Would you get bored with a post faster if it had nothing but words and no media on it? For me personally, the answer would be “Yes”.

4. Empire Avenue

Empire Avenue, as I've mentioned before in other articles, allows you to get your content in front of thousands of social media power-users. It's almost like I game.

You accumulate points through investing in stocks that are based on each person's social media activity or by completing missions for people.

Then, you use those points to start your own missions where you reward people for completing a certain task, like sharing your article on social media.

Some tips for Empire Avenue:

• Invest in new users to get more points because their stock price will go up significantly.
• Stick to doing only the highest paying missions.
• Have a high payout for your missions or you won't have many people doing them.
• Get a paid account for running multiple missions at one time and to receive other perks.

It can be pretty fun and you can get a HUGE boost in social media shares from using this. Here's an article with more Empire Avenue tips.

5. JustRetweet

JustRetweet is a free service that helps you get more Retweets, Facebook likes and Google+ shares. You earn points from sharing other people's tweets on one of the 3 major social media platforms or by following other users.

Then, you take those points and submit a tweet to get shared by the JustRetweet community. Each of them gets rewarded points for sharing it, so they can eventually start their own tweet campaign.

Some tips for using JustRetweet:

• Always include a link to your latest blog post in your submitted tweet to increase blog shares.
• Sort community tweets by the highest-paying, so you only have to share a few to get enough points.
• Reward sharers at least 8 points per tweet or you may not get a lot of social shares.
• Don't submit tweets with links to capture pages or affiliate links.

6. Viral Content Buzz

Viral Content Buzz is somewhat similar to JustRetweet, but you submit articles instead of tweets and it focuses on Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon and Pinterest.

You accumulate credits by sharing other people's articles on one of those 4 social media platforms. Then, when you have enough, you can start your own “project” and get shares from other community members.

It's free to start and very effective for helping you get more blog post shares and increasing site exposure.

Here are some tips for using Viral Content Buzz:

• Read the articles before sharing them. Viral Content Buzz has strict quality guidelines and doesn't want people blindly sharing just for points.
• Don't make separate social accounts just for sharing posts through this community. Like I said, they have strict quality guidelines and it does no one any good to just share to an audience of no one.
• Use at least 30 credits per project.
• Don't enable Pinterest shares for your project unless you have a Pinterest-optimized picture with your article title and domain URL on it.
• If you have Youtube videos, you can share them on here as well.
• Use the proper categories for your article or you won't get near as many shares.

For more on Viral Content Buzz, go here.

7. Less Social Media Buttons

Which looks less confusing?

This:

Or this:

According to many sites, having less means more when it comes to social media buttons.

Believe it or not, more social media buttons on your blog can create less shares. Why? Because when you give people too many options, it can lead to indecision. And indecision leads to less action.

If you have some social media sharing buttons with zero shares, it can look bad to your viewers. On top of that, social media buttons hurt your site's performance.

For more on the downsides of having too many social media share buttons, see what the Search Engine Journal had to say.

If I were you, I would stick to just having your top 3 or 4 social sharing buttons on your blog posts.

8. What Worked In The Past?

One strategy that people always seem to look over is checking what worked for them in the past. Every website has an audience that is a little difference from the next.

There is no one-size-fits-all way to figure out exactly what the visitors of every website want to read. So, go back and check which of your blog posts were the most popular.

One tool you can use for this is Quicksprout. Go to Quicksprout.com and search your URL. Then, go to “Social Media Analysis“. This will tell you which of your blog posts have the most social shares.

Write down the top 20 or 30 and then try to see what they have in common.

Not, only will this give you a better idea of what you viewers want to read, but it can be a great way to maximize your social shares per post and even create targeted info products specifically for your blog audience.

9. Revive Old Post

Revive Old Post is a great WordPress plugin for helping you get more social media shares and traffic for your posts, no matter how long ago you wrote them.

All you do is download the free plugin (only if you have a WordPress blog), install it on your blog, link your Twitter profile with it and configure your settings like:

• How often you want to share a post
• How old a post can be for sharing
• What tags you might want to use
• What categories of posts you want to exclude

With this, you will always be able to have a presence on Twitter and get A LOT more blog post shares over time, all on autopilot.

10. Make It Easy To Share

The harder you make things for people, the less likely they will be to do it. When it comes to getting lots of social media shares for your blog posts, you have to make it easy.

You can't expect people to copy the link, login to their profile, paste it, write something about it and then post it. You have to give them simple little one-click buttons to push.

As I mentioned earlier in this article, don't over use social media buttons or it will slow down your site and cause confusion with your visitors about where to share the article.

Instead, keep it simple. Get social media buttons that won't slow down your site (like Async Social Sharing or Floating Social Bar) and pick only 3 or 4 of the best ones for your blog.

On another note, I recommend you don't have a Pinterest social button next to your other ones.

Instead, download Sumome or another alternative that allows you to have a “Pin It” button that emerges on the images themselves when the visitor hovers over them with the cursor.

Here's an example:

Conclusion

Getting more social shares is really all about giving your audience what they want and making sure as many social media users see it as possible. When you do this, they want to share your work.

Give them in-depth, quality content on the subjects they are most interested in, grab their attention with great images or headlines and have social media tools and buttons ready for maximizing the exposure.

What has been your most successful strategy for getting more social media shares for your blog?