Social is all about sharing. For businesses, the toughest part is figuring out how to encourage more sharing. How to actually make that step happen.
The obvious first step is positioning of the sharing options. Place them out of the way and visitors simply won’t see them or won’t take the action. If you allow the human mind to *think* something is work, it’ll avoid it as if it was work. Making me look for a way to share socially feels like work, so I skip it. Placing the options to share immediately near the end of the content I just finished reading feels simple and I’m more likely to take the action. Pretty simple, really, but so many get it wrong.
Then you must also consider which options to include. Think carefully here. Because the usual suspects might not be where your target audience likes to engage. Offering more places to share is rarely an issue.
So those basics cove red, what else can a business do to engage people and encourage sharing?
• Create lists: people love to consume content in list-form. It’s quick, easy and simple.
• Use hooks: ego, humor, anger, contrarian – be careful with them, but when used well, they are highly effective.
• Participate in communities:when you are valued member of a community, the community supports you.
• Share others’ information: people love when what they share gets shared itself. Share from trusted sources.
• Ask questions: your followers will love the interaction and it’ll grow your following as others engage.
Tool Time
And with that nod to a comedic sitcom classic, it’s time to make with all kinds of useful tools for you guys. There is a broad range of tools being shared here, so the theme is “useful” as opposed to just “seo” or “social” in focus.
• Bing Webmaster Tools – www.bing.com/webmaster (SEO reporting, link development) …and yeah, you should have an account elsewhere, too…
• For Twitter (there are obviously many more)
• Hootsuite – http://www.hootsuite.com/ $ 9.99/month for PRO (recommended)
• Tweetbot – tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/
• Echfon – www.echofon.com/
• For Instagram
• Statigram – statigr.am/ (stats for IG)
• Instafriends – inst.me/ (manage friends at Instagram)
• For Pinterest
• Curalate – www.curalate.com/ (Analytics & Marketing)
• Evernote – http://www.evernote.com/ (Data collection point)
• IFTTT – http://www.ifttt.com/ (connector of dots)
• Some competitors of IFTTT:
• http://elastic.io/about.html
• https://zapier.com/
• Zapier is more user friendly than IFTTT, though IFTTT has better channel choices.
• Trackur – http://www.trackur.com/ (social media analytics)
• Social Management Platforms
• Sprinklr - www.sprinklr.com/ (enterprise level gear)
• Visible - www.visibletechnologies.com/ (SM monitoring, analytics & engagement)
• Social Mention – http://www.socialmention.com/ – cool search engine to see stats on queries
• For Windows Phone - mehdoh.com/ - what? I rock a Windows Phone and this app rocks social!
6 Second to Fame, Fortune and Warm ‘N Fuzzies
Vine – you know it, but are you using it? Lowes, Kate Spade, Urban Outfitters, GE, A&W, Mailchimp and more are effectively using Vine to engage with people in enchanting ways (yes, I said enchanting). 6 seconds forces you to get crisp, stay on message and think of how to bring value. In return, you get many, many replays as viewers seek to soak in every detail, constantly repeating YOUR message over and over.
They are using Vine to share knowledge, entice engagement, entertain and offer behind the scene glimpses. Solid overview article here.
…and drum roll please…the big list of data and social media tools!
• Alexa.com
• Board Reader
• Sysomos
• Facebook Insights
• Follower Wonk
• Google Insights
• How Sociable
• Ice Rocket trends
• Buffer
• Klout
• Peerindex
• Kred
• Mention Map
• Social Mention
• Statigram
• Twitter Counter
• Tweetreach
• Visual.ly
Oh, and one more useful fellow for viewing your website and getting all kinds of stats from your pages in near real time: http://www.webpagetest.org Tip of the hat to @bruceclayinc for sharing this useful tool at BendWebCam earlier this week!
How To Encourage More Social Sharing + 36 Other Useful Tools
