Share-ology (the science of sharing)
Make Sharing Easy - make it one click easy for your fans and followers to share your content - I like to use a Wordpress plugin called Sexy Bookmarks), make sure to share your own links on social media which often has one button sharing factored in like ReTweets for Twitter or Share for Facebook, make sure you tag your pages or profile in the post yourself to make it easy for people to find where the post originated from. Bookmark your own posts on places like Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon etc...
Validate Sharers
- make sure you validate, comment on and reciprocate engagement by your fans and followers, it might take a little time but even one line to show you honour those wonderful people who take the time to share, comment on and advocate your content across the web to their social network is not only great kharma, it is good manners! Be grateful to those who are there for you.
Cross post and Mashups - when you have a list of people who regularly engage with and share your content it is time to start offering Guest Post opportunities to these people, this not only helps to promote them and honour the contribution they make to your marketing, it also allows your site to become a hub for all those followers and fans of your guest posters. A win-win situation! Mashups are when you gather a little information from a few posts and create one post that features all of these quotes and links back to the original writers - great PR! Another way to use this idea is to use a Wordpress Plugin that uses RSS to bring in any feed into it and this becomes a News site for that area or niche - (this requires some techie expertise) You can then create a whole site dedicated to your fav writers in a certain area or niche based around what you do - fun and gathers you loads of respect for being the creator and innovator.
Tag, Hashtag and Meta Stuff
- this is a real weakness in so many peoples sharing!!!!!! Every time you post a new blogpost, upload an image or video, send out a Tweet, or post on Facebook be sure to tag it with keywords and descriptions or excerpts that match your content and audience! Be sure to use keywords that are relevent to the post in your headlines, in your decriptions, in your list of tags, and your links - note: do not shorten your links unless absolutely necessary! Search engines use the words in them to follow them and rank the page on your site! If you are using bit.ly or other shorteners to track clicks use SNS Analytics instead for all but Twitter links, and you can schedule a lot of your posting ahead of time using full links or your shortened links to Twitter.
Use hashtags suited to your niche when tweeting, you can use local hashtags like #SunshineCoast or niched hashtags like #socialmedia - make sure they are all one word or more than one word run together as seen here. If you are unsure about your hashtags and want to find which ones are already being used in your niche, go to Twitter and search #yourword/s and see which ones have the most traffic on them first, plus create your own for your site, niche etc.. and use them regularly.
I help people find their authentic voice and project it out into the world with integrity, passion and authenticity. Oh and by the way, I strategise, manage and teach social media as well. Annie is a successful social media strategist, consultant and trainer whose clientele includes both international and Australian businesses with wide and varying interests from green businesses, jewellery, resorts, directories and social sites. She is the owner of Saucy Social Media a social media management, consulting and training company, specialising in creating social media strategic plans, social media management and education (workshops) and training (in-house) in social media for businesses.