Do you get all the traffic you’d like for your site? Do visitors just keep pouring in, letting you meet all of your business goals with ease?
Yeah, don’t worry, no one actually says Yes to that question.
Getting new people to your site can be tricky, and changes in Google and Facebook algorithms don’t make it any simpler.
As it happens, there’s one traffic strategy that virtually all “big blogs” use.
It works, no matter what’s going on with the big search engines or social platforms. It doesn’t cost anything. It gets more effective in cluttered, noisy environments with “too much” content.
And you definitely do not need to be “big” to implement it effectively.
This miracle strategy is optimizing your content for social sharing — making it irresistible for readers and influencers to get the word out about the work you’re doing.
Unlike search engine optimization or trying to guess what Facebook wants from your page this week, most techniques for social sharing optimization are evergreen. Because it relies on human engagement, not some other company’s algorithm.
One warning before you start
There’s one important thing to know before you start optimizing for shares — what do you want your content to do?
What action or change are you hoping to inspire? Who are you striving to reach? How do you want people to feel? What should they do next?
If you don’t understand your content goals, you can end up making changes that work against those goals, for the sake of “more eyeballs.” And that’s usually a terrible idea.
So, once you’ve got your content goals firmly in mind, here are some things to keep in mind when you’re looking for more folks to share your content.
Influencers gonna influence
Of course, we expect that a web publisher with a significant audience — a “big blog” — is going to be influential. It just makes sense.
But big publishers also understand why influencers share content … because they’re looking for high-quality material to share themselves.
That means that bigger sites get very smart about how to make the content they publish appealing to share. Make a study of the big sites you like, and watch what they’re doing to craft content that gets the Share buttons clicking.
Influencers are looking for great experiences to share with their audiences….
