Why You Need to Add Social Share Buttons Now
Categorized in: Social Media
Operating a business blog is a great way to communicate with target audience members and share your thoughts and opinions on business matters in an informal way. It’s not easy to maintain a blog as it takes time to brainstorm a topic, write posts, edit them, post them, and then monitor the comments. If you’re going to dedicate all of that time to your blog you want to get the most out of it, right? The success of a blog largely depends on how many people actually read it and one important way to increase readership is to include social share buttons on every blog post.
Do you have social share buttons on your blog? If not, you’ll want to add them now. Here’s why:
You’ll Get Social Signals
The search engines now include the strength of a link in social media as an algorithm-ranking factor. Strength is measured by calculating the number of times that content is shared, tweeted, liked, and posted in social media. So if your content is getting shared frequently, that will improve its search engine ranking for relevant keywords. Since social share buttons make it so much easier for a reader to pass along your content to their network, without them you are missing out on a huge opportunity.
Increase Brand Exposure
Marketing and advertising is all about getting your brand and messaging in front of as many potential clients and customers as possible. Millions of people use social networks every day. Obviously not everyone that could benefit from your product or service has heard of you. Including social share buttons increases the likelihood of getting your content in front of new eyeballs. When someone shares your content with their network, it might get seen by a new potential customer, who then may share it with their network, and another new potential customer who then may share it with their network, etc. may see it. The possibilities are limitless and this is an important way to improve brand visibility across the web and increase your number of social followers.
Encourage a Good User Experience
It’s important to make any interaction that a potential client or customer has with your brand a smooth and easy process. It should be simple to navigate your blog, which should include categories and a search feature so that visitors can quickly find a post that is most relevant to their needs at any particular time. You should also make it easy for them to share your content, so easy that they don’t even need to think about it. If they think it’s helpful or interesting they can quickly click on a button and boom, it’s shared.
Develop Natural Links
Because of the social share buttons, people will share your links with others, as long as it’s well written and provides value. Over time, people will do more than just share the links on social – they’ll create valuable, natural links. As more and more people share your content on social media, you’ll increase the chances of gaining natural links.
Get More Traffic
One of the biggest benefits of adding social share buttons is that it can help increase traffic to your site. With so many content options online, it can be hard to get your information read. Simply put, sharing content increases overall traffic. Instead of making it hard for people to share, make it easy by including sharing buttons.
So, you know that you need to add social share buttons. Here are some additional things to keep in mind before you do add them:
Use Native Plugins from the Site
Generic social media plugins aren’t as effective as the native plugins that come straight from the site. Native plugins are branded, which means that, at least on an unconscious level, people are more likely to use them to share your content. Overall, the usability of the share buttons that come straight from the sites is much higher. All the main sites – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, and etc. all have their own buttons. Note that they do increase load time. However, the usability is so much higher, it’s worth using these buttons.
Add Value with the Social Share Buttons
You want your social share buttons to add value to your site. For instance, when including the buttons to your posts, you may be tempted to put them at the top or bottom. However, it’s much more effective to put them in both places, which adds value both for you and the user. Another issue is that not every page on your site will need the buttons. For instance, if you have a static page, such as an about me page, adding social share buttons to these posts doesn’t really add anything. Do you really want to these pages to be shared in social? However, you definitely will want your blog content to be shared, so it makes sense to add the buttons to your posts.
If you don’t include the buttons there’s a higher likelihood that it won’t get shared, or that someone who has the intent to share the content opens up a new window, signs in to their social network, gets distracted and forgets about your page altogether. Don’t take the risk. Add share buttons so that blog visitors will stay on your site longer.
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