Every online publication wants to see their content go viral, but reaching that goal isn’t always easy.
While part of the equation is content creation and placement, the other part involves how social media sharing buttons are implemented.
Working with your clients to get the perfect blend to improve social media sharing is key to seeing content go viral. Be ready to play around a little with placement before you find what works best for your client’s audience.
1. Place The Best Content First
A recent study by Ipsos found 24% of social media users tend to share nearly everything. That’s helpful, but you want more than 24% to share stories on a site. One way to improve this percentage is to constantly change content placement on the site. Content layout plugins are an easy way to help your clients rearrange content quickly.
Set aside a larger section just below the header to place the newest stories. Just below that, place the top stories for the week or day. Visitors are more likely to click on something if they see hundreds or thousands of others have already liked or shared it. Some publications opt to place their most shared, most liked or generally more popular posts in a sidebar near the top of the homepage.
2. Make Social Sharing Obvious
We’ve all seen online publications that have made the fatal mistake of having confusing social share buttons. Either the buttons are difficult to find or it’s hard to tell what you’re sharing. If sharing options aren’t clear, visitors would rather not share the content at all.
Ensure there’s space between any social share buttons and navigational buttons. Also place sharing buttons at the top of content or close to the content being shared. Visitors should never have to guess whether they’re sharing an article, a link to the homepage or something else entirely. Visitors are used to seeing these buttons near the top of the articles they read, so it’s one of the first places they might look.
3. Place Buttons In Multiple Locations
Visitors might get to the end of a story and not think twice about scrolling back up to share it. Instead, they’ll move on to a different story or site. The solution is to place social share buttons in multiple locations. For individual articles, sharing buttons at the top and bottom are ideal.
Some online publications are even incorporating sharing inside articles. For example, some sites place important quotes or statistics in between paragraphs for visitors to share with appropriate share links beside them. If each story or article has three or more chances for social sharing, the odds of a reader sharing the content increases.
4. Limit Social Sharing Buttons
It might sound counter-productive, but too many social sharing buttons actually makes things worse. Visitors feel overwhelmed with options and it’s hard to find the social network they’re looking for when there’s 10-15 different networks to choose from.
Ask your clients to analyze which social networks their audience uses most. Limiting sharing buttons to four or five networks often works best. Some sites use ShareThis or AddToAny which contain multiple networks in a single button.
If your clients still want to use numerous buttons, remind them that when visitors see few or zero shares with all the various networks, they’re less likely to share the content themselves. Having a few networks with numerous shares makes content look more share worthy.
5. Show Number Of Shares
Not only does showing how many others have shared a piece of content boost views, but it also encourages others to share. Think of viral content. It starts with a small number of shares which leads to more views. Those viewers share it because their friends shared it with them. It creates a snowball effect.
Showing social shares for the site itself and for individual articles or stories helps show how popular a site is. People love to stay on popular sites and read popular content. It’s the same mentality of wanting to fit in at school or work. The idea of sharing what others already like makes a site’s readers feel more like a community.
Conclusion
Odds are, many visitors are eager to share any content they find helpful, shocking or entertaining. Making sure it’s easy for them to share the content is key. It may take a little trial and error to improve social media sharing at first to see which networks and button placement works best. It’s well worth the effort to watch page views and sharing increase.
Help your clients start off right. Install the Conductor plugin today and give them control over layouts and placement.