Content Marketing Tutorial - Optimize content for sharing

People share 3.2 billion images on social media every day. And they share other content too, like links to articles and quotes and videos and more. Wouldn't it be great if some of that content people shared was yours? Well, that nice idea can be reality if you take steps to encourage sharing your content. But first, let me note why having your customers or followers share your content is so important. When they share your content, they essentially introduce you to their own social networks. So people who aren't following or connected to you directly get to see your content and become exposed to your brand. And if they like your content, then those people just might become your new followers or fans. Okay, now let's touch on three tips to make your content shareable. The first tip is to pick the right days and times to share. According to data from TrackMaven and CoSchedule, sharing around 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday is optimal. More people will be likely to see and engage with your content. But you can experiment with your specific network to see when your audience responds best. The second tip is to optimize your content for sharing on social media. This involves a few different techniques. If your content is on a website, then make sure it's coded to work for Twitter cards and Facebook's social graph. That's a fancy way of saying make sure Twitter and Facebook know what description and image to pull when people share the link to your content. Also include widgets and buttons throughout your content that make sharing it on social media easy. One of my favorite examples is pulling a quote from the content and putting it in a nice box with a prompt, click to tweet. And now let's turn to the third tip. Offer content so compelling, your customers will want to share it. It helps to consider why people share content on social media. They do so to express their support of an idea or cause, to entertain, to express their personality, and to get approval from their friends or colleagues. So make the headlines, descriptions, and visuals for your content appeal to one of those reasons. To help, CoSchedule offers a free headline analyzer tool to make your headlines catchy and intriguing. So people love to share content on social media. Make it easy for them to do what they love. When people share your content with their own networks, then you expand the reach of your content and your content marketing program will thrive.