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Social Media
Here are two unlikely friends.

One of the best ways to bring traffic to your website is by sharing on social media. Now if you just share with your friends on Facebook, you might be able to garner a few hundred extra clicks here and there, but if you can get your friends to share and retweet, that is where you gather thousands of page views per day. But there are a few tricks to help increase those shares, and there methods that work better than others to get those shares, clicks, and views.

What to Share on Social Media

The majority of people use social media, especially Facebook, for two reasons. They want to keep in touch with people they otherwise wouldn’t talk to regularly, and they want to be entertained. So when you share a webpage with a headline like, “The Math Behind the Micro-structural Components of a Fig Leaf” the vast majority of people will be asleep before they finish the headline. It is interesting… to about .1% of the population.

By knowing your audience, you can tailor what you share to their tastes. This means that you have to write what people want to read, and not what you want people to read. Suppose that you are scrolling through your news feed, and you see two articles linked, one after the other. The first one is titled, “A Stray Cat Befriends a Blind Dog” and the description states, “You will never believe what happens on a daily basis when this unlikely pair meets.” The second article is titled, “Economic Policies in Nigeria Erode the Value of the Nigerian Naira” and the description states, “Learn more about how changes made by President Goodluck Jonathan have caused the Nigerian currency to tumble in value.” How likely are you to click on the feel-good story, instead of the story talking about economic policy in an African country you likely have never been to and likely has no bearing on your life? Most people will click the first (seriously though, his name is really Goodluck Jonathan).

People want to read about things that pertain to their lives and enrich their lives even further. Inspiring stories, funny anecdotes, and, sadly enough, sexual content are what drive clicks.

What Not to Share on Social Media

Knowing what will spread like wild fire on social media is one thing, but there are some “rules” that go along with sharing.

First, if your website is dedicated to SEO in Billings, Montana, then you likely don’t want to write a click bait story about a porn star. If your main focus on the being a writer in Billings, Montana, then trying to garner views by writing about “10 awe inspiring pictures of spring flowers” will leave people wondering why you’re not sticking to your topic at hand. Don’t get me wrong, those things do work; but they’re a bit sneaky and don’t do much to enhance your online reputation.

How to Share on Social Media

If you have a fan page on Facebook already, that is great, especially if you have a lot of followers. But you still need to share properly to reach everyone. The same goes with Twitter and most other social media platforms.

The way that Facebook’s algorithms are written is so your posts won’t show up on everyone’s newsfeed every time. If every single thing showed up, then the servers would be bogged down beyond belief and nothing would work. Facebook uses methods to show you only what you look at most. So if you visit “Woodworking Enthusiasts” a lot, then your newsfeed will show more of those posts.

Because not everyone sees everything (and honestly it can be as low as 5% of your followers actually see the posts), you need to post things more than once. You may irritate some followers, but they will get over it. Post something once, and then wait a few days or a week, reword it, and post it again. This will help you reach more of your followers.

Twitter is similar, but as far as I can tell it does actually show everything. But since a lot of people follow thousands of people, there is a good chance that your post goes unseen. You have to post at different times of the day to capture different crowds. So if you tweet at 8am on a Monday, tweeting the same content at noon on a Thursday will reach a whole new crowd (this is especially true the more followers you have).

The bottom line is that if you want to get noticed and drive traffic, tweet or post often. The more times people see your info, the more likely you are to earn a click. By the way, don’t be shy about asking for a share or a retweet.

How Do You Do It?

Sharing content on social media helps not just to drive traffic, but it will bring you up in the Google ranks as well. Google will notice that more traffic is coming to your website. Because more people are viewing, that means you are more popular, and you will be boosted in the ranks.

Do you share content through social media? What methods have you found to be the most effective?

I am a writer and SEO expert in Billings, Montana. Social media is a component that I have largely ignored, and I am now working to boost my online presence. I am still learning about social media and I love feedback and tips.

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