Maybe you’ve published a post you thought should get more traction. But, when you check the stats less than a dozen people have shared the post. What’s going on? Shouldn’t there be more people actively sharing your content?
Even if you’re creating solid content there are still a number of reasons your content isn’t being shared, like it should. There are thousands of pieces of content being published across the web every single day, so how do you make yours stand out?
One thing that’ll help is avoiding the mistakes we highlight in this post. Below you’ll learn what common mistakes you might be making that are actively stopping readers from sharing your content.
Let’s get to it!
1. Your Content is a Disguised Sales Pitch
When you go back and read through one of your posts does it feel like a valuable blog post, or does it read like a sales pitch that’s disguised as a blog post?
Naturally, if you have content that talks about your services, or products, these will generally get much less traction than more helpful how-to posts. But, if every post you create always relates back to your offering, in a non-subtle way, then this could be discouraging sales.
It’s totally cool to have a few links to your offerings from within your content, but make sure it’s not the focal point of your point.
Every blog post you write is about creating value for your readers. If you can solve enough of their problems for free, your readers will begin to actively seek out your products and services.
2. You’re Not Addressing Your Target Market
If your content doesn’t speak to your target market, then they’re not going to share your posts. It’s that simple. Take note of who you’re actually speaking to and make sure that each post is intentionally crafted to address their needs alone.
When you try to speak to everyone you end up speaking to no one.
You can also encourage a community response with your content. This means engaging with your comments, asking questions throughout and prompting people to engage. By engaging with your audience they’ll feel a deeper connection to you and your content, which will help to foster a sharing environment.
3. You’re Making it Too Difficult to Share
If you don’t have social sharing widgets throughout your content, then your users aren’t going to share. The more effort your reader has to go through to actually share your content the less likely they’re actually going to do it.
Make sure you have social sharing widgets enabled throughout your site. The most effective options are sidebar sharing widgets, like those offered through the SumoMe plugin.
You can even encourage users to share by actually asking them to share your post, if they enjoyed it, as the final CTA.
4. Your Content Isn’t “Built” for the Web
People won’t share your content if it isn’t written in a readable way. What does this mean?
It means you have a captivating headline, your content is broken up with subheadings, you have shorter sentences and paragraph breaks, and you even have bulleted lists if need be.
Your content needs to be easy to scan and easy to digest.
Writing content for the web is hard work, but when it works it can be an invaluable tool for your business. We hope you can avoid the mistakes and boost the sharability of your content with the tips we highlighted above.
If you’re looking for some help creating a content strategy that works, why don’t you reach out to our team today.
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Image via: Bonnie Kittle
