21 Power Tips To Get Your Blog Content Shared On Facebook and Twitter

Written by Jeff Bullas - View Comments
Categories: Blog, Facebook, Social Media, twitter


There is a recurring nightmare that I have and it started on the day that I posted my first article on my blog. It goes something like this…I wake up in the morning and check my blog traffic and no one has shown up to read  my latest post. The Google analytics show zero traffic and the WordPress stats confirm it.. yes..what I had written is so boring and  uninviting that the digital natives went off to play with the other 199 million bloggers and never came back. Matching that nightmare is the dream that the readers will turn up in their thousands and become raving fans.21 Power Tips To Get Your Content Shared On Facebook and Twitter

Bloggers in the main, crave attention otherwise they wouldn’t write, so making your content easy to share is one step towards having readers show up every day to your blog. Providing a tempting and low friction content sharing environment requires constant optimizing and fine tuning of your blog and the social media ecosystem that sustains it.

A lot of brilliant writers and musicians remain largely undiscovered because they haven’t learnt the art and science of  being shared online.

21 Power Tips Tips To Get Your Blog Content Shared On Twitter & Facebook

1. Write catchy compelling headlines

You have about 3 seconds (if you are lucky) to get someone to click on your headline on Twitter. Learn to write a good headline.

Read more:  How To Write A Mind Blowing Headline For Twitter So People Will Read Your Blog

2. Produce great content

This requires you to read extensively in your particular industry and niche. There is always interesting events and trends in any industry you just need to discover them and continue to work on your writing skills if you are text blogger or your presentation and production skills if you are video blogger. Great content can be 10 bullet poignant points with some links and a 2 sentence intro, you need to learn the basics of online writing.

3. Tweet it

Just hitting publish on your new blog post is like building a secret and stunning castle in the forest. If you don’t tell anyone you built your magnificent edifice it is like waiting for the odd hiker to literally stumble upon it to enjoy its charms. So tell the world… they are waiting to discover you.

4. Get lots of Twitter followers

This is important as Twitter is a fast flowing stream and your tweet will be buried in the torrent. The goal is to get as many eyeballs as possible to increase your odds of being noticed the percentage game that is Twitter.  Twitter is a numbers game don’t let anyone tell you anything different.

Read more: How To Get 53,000 Twitter Followers

5. Get lots of Twitter followers who are interested in what you do

This is important and this is about enhancing and optimizing your large  Twitter followers clan. If you have followers who are interested in football and you create content about scuba diving then your click through rate on Facebook updates with links and retweets on Twitter will be miniscule, because that audience will not care. Develop and grow a following that is interested in your blog topics.

Read more: How To Get Targeted Twitter Followers

6. Get influence

This a tricky one but it comes down to the saying “What comes first the chicken or the egg?”. Content that resonates with your readers is the start but after that comes elements like social proof ( which Robert Cialdini covers in his book “The Psychology of Persuasion” ) and this can be as simple as publishing your Twitter follower count on your blog especially once you have a 1,000 or more.

Read more: Two Keys To Be influential On Twitter

7. Write or video blog regularly

Don’t expect your content to be shared if you only write once a month. You content production needs to be regular like a newspaper or any other offline publication

8. Place a retweet button on your blog

This removes the need for people to copy, paste and then shorten your links if they want to share your post on Twitter. Two clicks and your content is shared on Twitter.

9. Embed a Facebook share button on your blog

Again two clicks and you are in front of someone’s 500 best friends on Facebook

10. Repeat tweet your content over and over and over

Platforms like Social Oomph Professional can make it easy for you to regularly put your content in the Social media ecosystem

11. Cozy up to influential power Twitterers

Some ways to do this is to comment on their blogs and retweet their tweets. It won’t work all the time but it does work. Having someone with 100,000 plus Twitter followers finally share your tweets can drive high volumes of traffic.

12. Comment on other blogs

This gets you noticed and encourages other bloggers to comment on your blog and encourages them to start sharing via the law of reciprocity

13. Install a Facebook “Page” social plugin

As traffic builds and your content gets noticed people will “like’ your Facebook page  and then your blog posts that you update on your Facebook  page will appear in other people Facebook news. This is producing significant traffic for my blog and has more than doubled my Facebook content referral.

14. Be controversial

Mark Schaefer does this well  on his blog businessgrow.com, an example of this is a recent post “Why Are The Social Media Elite Ignoring Us“. It generates comments and traffic that sometimes a normal post will not.

15. Answer problems

People quite often read articles to solve their problems. Answer common issues and challenges in your industry.

16. Inspire

Mix up your posts with occasional articles that offer hope and promise results that will take people out of the mundaneness of their day to day existence. A blog that does this with great results is is the Blog “Zen Habits” (which has 210,000 subscribers) with articles like “Surround Yourself  With Passionate People”

17. Get email subscribers

Make it easy for people to subscribe via email to your blog. This means that when you write a post it will turn up in the persons email inbox and with your compelling headline will drive users to read your blog.

18. Make it easy for readers to subscribe via RSS

Delivering your latest posts into someone’s Google reader where you push new content rather than make people find it ensures that you keep top of mind and make it easy to share.

19. Get people to follow you on the major social media platforms

Place these icons like these in your WordPress Blog so subscribers can receive updates and follow you whenever you publish on the platform they prefer.

21 Power Tips To Get Your Content Shared On Facebook and Twitter

20. Produce topical content

As industries evolve the conversations change and people are looking for the latest and greatest. For me the growth of Facebook has meant that I needed to write more on Facebook marketing

21. Write a book and get some credibility

Writing a book is like a credibility badge of honor. You will notice that most of the top bloggers have manged to publish at least one book. Credibility creates influence which promotes sharing

So there are some tips to get you started. What are some other ideas you can think of to get shared around and get “discovered”?

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  • http://thefuturebuzz.com AdamSinger

    Why so much emphasis on getting shared on Facebook and Twitter Jeff? The social web as a whole is a lot larger. Seems myopic. Funny you wrote this headline, I wrote exactly the opposite this week. I think there’s *too much* of a focus on Facebook and Twitter specifically. There is a lot more to the social web :)

  • http://jeffbullas.com Jeff Bullas

    Thanks for the comment Adam. There are 2 questions you have to ask
    1.Which platform will people use that will give me the most leverage to get my brand message out?
    2. Where are most of my customers hanging out?
    By all means use other channels that are relevant to your audience but you need to be looking at the social media channels where you can get the best possible results in the shortest possible time. Cheers

  • http://www.facebook.com/tkotijyadi Todoitibeaqi Kotijyadi

    Thanks for well-timed tips, Jeff! Are they refered to a personal or a corporate blog more?

    I’ve posted an article with some tips for a corporate Twitter that correspond with yours. Hope you’ll find them usefull! http://fb.me/NxiBApsT

  • http://twitter.com/lojinks Lorraine Williams

    great tips, thanks Jeff. I use blogger and can’t work out how to get my new posts emailed direct to my blog followers (all 12 of them!) Can anyone advise?

    It also seems to be quite clunky for people to be able to comment, while I clicked here from twitter and my profile is already set up for me to comment on here, much slicker. Is this the difference between wordpress and blogger or have you done something clever that I ought to be able to emulate?

  • http://jeffbullas.com Jeff Bullas

    Lorraine..I don’t use “Blogger” so maybe someone else who does may be able to answer that question

  • http://blog.esimplestudios.com Gabriele Maidecchi

    With so many advices, I will have to select one I love and one I don’t from your list. Make it easy to subscribe via RSS has to be one of my fave one for the specific reason MANY bloggers still hide this option as much as they can. Just the other day, I was visiting a blog I won’t mention, and in order to subscribe to the feed I had to manually look through the HTML source code… I mean, that’s very sad.
    The one I don’t really agree with is getting a lot of Twitter followers. I mean, I do agree with the principle, but the problem is that most people really take this wrong and go as far as literally buying Twitter followers. That kind of approach really doesn’t appeal to me, but no worries, I know you didn’t mean that :)

  • Mark W Schaefer

    This post is a keeper, Jeff and thanks for mentioning me. Ironically, I did not set out to be controversial on thaqt post. I was rather surprised by the surge of emotion it elicited. But there is a lesson here. By simply answering a reader question, it uncovered the fact that this was on a LOT of people’s minds. Something to keep in mind.

    Thanks for rocking the blogosphere. You’re the best.

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  • Anonymous

    Fabulous helpful post, AND you mention one of my favourite posts from Mark’s http://www.businessesgrow.com
    Love all the tips: will be putting them into action! Kaarina

  • Ralph

    Thanks, very helpful.
    Question: How many times can/should you tweet your blog post? Do you do it just once, or can you repeat it yourself (in case your initial tweet is missed by many)?
    Thanks,

    Ralph

  • http://jeffbullas.com Jeff Bullas

    I maybe tweet a new post 3-5 times in the first 24 hours. I then automate it to be scheduled to go out once every 6 days. For more read these 2 posts
    http://www.jeffbullas.com/2009/10/10/what-do-you-use-twitter-for-new-twitter-power-poll-survey/
    http://www.jeffbullas.com/2010/12/10/how-to-get-46000-twitter-followers-my-story/
    I hope that helps

  • http://bobstmarketing.com/2011/03/31/21-power-tips-tips-to-get-your-blog-content-shared-on-twitter-facebook/ 21 Power Tips Tips To Get Your Blog Content Shared On Twitter & Facebook » Bobst Marketing
  • http://twitter.com/kevinmontgomery Kevin Montgomery

    Jeff, I tend to shy away from tweeting about posts more than once. So, you reckon it is a good idea?

  • http://twitter.com/kevinmontgomery Kevin Montgomery

    Those are good points. Facebook is my biggest driver…….twitter is about 20% of the Facebook traffic. Since i’ve added Facebook Comments instead of Disqus my traffic has skyrocketed. Love them both. I would be interested to know how Adam defines “social web”? To me….they ARE the social web. Not trying to be contradictory, but am sincerely curious?

  • http://jeffbullas.com Jeff Bullas

    My experience is that tweeting your latest post a few times in the first 24 hours after you have written your post works well and then I send out a scheduled automated tweet once every six days for all my posts on my blog( it works for me as my traffic is now over 100,000 hits per month)

  • http://cavemanhomecompanion.com/ Caveman

    I’m a new blogger and this article sure was helpful! Thank you!
    http://cavemanhomecompanion.com/

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    Thanks a lot for this informative post i like this post thanks a lot for this great information. keep posting and updating the blog. i like it so much….
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  • http://twitter.com/schnoerrchen Katharina Schnorr

    I like your tips and will try to follow them when I will put up my blog (soon, soon, soon) but I have a question: I’ve been wondering about the facebook connection anyway: Up to now, I use my facebook profil only for private things. If I set up my blog, should I direct people to my private facebook account that I use to communicate with friends? I wouldn’t want to mix those things up, to be honest. So, do I set up a group or fanpage for my blog?
    With twitter, that is another thing as I already use @schnoerrchen as a form of microblogging and could direct people there.

  • http://jeffbullas.com Jeff Bullas

    Thanks Katharina for your comment. You need to set up a Facebook Fanpage for your blog, that will keep things separate.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1505383440 Neil Farley

    Very good info, thanks for sharing. Really helpful comments.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Steve-James/100002651686831 Steve James

    Thanks for the article Jeff. Some great tips!

  • http://www.photography-scotland.com Ros

    Another great post Jeff, full of relevant info. Thanks. A valuable point that it’s necessary to constantly optimise and fine tune your blog and the social media systems. I had automated my blog posts to be posted to my FaceBook page via Networked Blogs, but have noticed recently that a lot of people must be unable to see these posts – the stats on them have dropped dramatically. I’ve taken to doing it manually til I can suss out what’s happening. I’m guessing it’s to do with the new FB layout.
    Thanks again!

  • http://www.photography-scotland.com Ros

    Another great post Jeff, full of relevant info. Thanks. A valuable point that it’s necessary to constantly optimise and fine tune your blog and the social media systems. I had automated my blog posts to be posted to my FaceBook page via Networked Blogs, but have noticed recently that a lot of people must be unable to see these posts – the stats on them have dropped dramatically. I’ve taken to doing it manually til I can suss out what’s happening. I’m guessing it’s to do with the new FB layout.
    Thanks again!

  • Anonymous

    Hi Jeff
    Normally when I see a 21 things you can do to ‘ABC’ list, I assume it’s a kitchen sink article and I’ll have to sift though it for maybe one nugget. BUT, this is a terrific list that is full of specific and actionable points. I can see myself doing pretty much the whole lot. Well done – outstanding!

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  • http://twitter.com/himachhag hima chhag

    Hey jeff,

    This is fantastic. 21 steps for marketing blog.
    Worth reading !!

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