4 Simple Ways to Make Your Next Blog Post Just a Little more Shareable

Shareable Blog PostsWriting every single day is a great habit for all bloggers. Doing so helps you publish content on more frequent basis and generate a consistent flow of traffic along the way.

And although by posting more times a week, you will certainly benefit from more direct traffic and more RSS visitors, doing so won’t necessarily guarantee more social media traffic.

Before you even start hoping for better results in terms of Facebook likes or Twitter retweets, there are several elements that you have to consider! The below paragraphs are all about them!

Scroll down to discover five tips that will help you make your content more appealing to the reader and thus more shareable on the social networks:

Make the Topic Clear Right Away
and Focus on one Thing

One great WordPress plugin I recently installed is WordPress SEO by Yoast (mentioned it in my WordPress plugins post). That one lets you set a keyword for the post you are writing and gives you guidelines to follow so that you do a good on-site SEO job.

But what does this has to do with making the topic clear?

Well it’s simple – starting with a keyword of some sort or a keyphrase, or even something as broad as a key idea is crucial in terms of relevancy.

Whichever of the three you decide to focus on, you have to make sure that the title and the first paragraph contain it! These two components are what the visitor sees and if the title doesn’t correspond to the intro, people might have hard time establishing a connection.

So, how do you make the intro specific enough?

Firstly go for simple sentences. Start with a description of that initial idea. Then before you start writing the main part of your article, present in brief what the visitor should expect, as in this post for instance:

“Scroll down to discover five tips that will help you make your content more appealing to the reader and thus more shareable on the social networks:”

Don’t Forget to Supplement
Your Post with Images

Blog post images… I believe that this is the second most important component of any article that aims to grab the visitor’s attention (and have even dedicated a whole post to it: “4 Reasons to Add Images to Your Blog Posts).

Readers can easily get bored even if the topic they are reading is something they have interest in.

Relevancy plays its role, but…

Hasn’t it happened to you to check say ten articles but from all of them to end up fully reading only one or two? I am certain the answer is yes!

A post might be highly relevant to what you are looking for, but that won’t necessarily get you to read it. And that’s where images come into play! Images help you keep the attention just a little longer. A little longer, so that the visitor has enough time to skip that boring moment, keep reading and hopefully share the article.

Use Post Notes to Keep the
Visitor’s Eyes on the Article

Post NoteSo aside from images, what can you do to make the post a little bit more engaging?

One way I thought to try is with the so-called post notes. They are really simple. Whenever there’s something important to say, you wrap it up in a note.

The note is simply a CSS class with different formatting so that it stands out. As you can see in my recent posts, mines are like green boxes.

Post notes do a good job at catching one’s attention, mostly because they contrast very well with all other blog elements.

After putting post notes to use I actually saw a 2-3% decrease in bounce rates – definitely not much, but still worth it. Plus it makes blog posts look better.

Feel Free to Shape Your
Content Outside of the Box

There are literally dozens of articles aimed to help you write better blog posts. Although many of them provide good tips, not all apply to you. So before deciding to utilize anything you’ve just discovered think twice!

A good example can be the above tip about using post notes. They might work well for me, but who knows – the same might not be the best solution for your blog.

Basically it all comes down to analyzing and adapting the available options to suit your needs. After all we all don’t have the same readers, so we should not all follow the same approach. Don’t blindly follow an advice only because it’s posted on a high-authority blog! Testing is key! 

Final Words

Hope you enjoyed the ideas guys! Now it’s your turn! What other factors there are when it comes to making your posts shareable? Is it even possible to achieve this, or is the content itself all that matters? 

Did You Find This Post Helpful?

Enter your email address below and you will receive my latest social media, marketing and blogging insights straight in your inbox! NOTE: I don't tolerate spam and will never send spam!

Share your thoughts!

  1. Great post! One thing I find to be very important when I’m sharing blog posts is the title. If it’s catchy, it has a better chance to be worth sharing. But, that said, the title needs to be consistent with a good quality post. If the content is weak or jumps all over the place, or if it has too many links promoting the author, it’s out for me. I also like the post to promote other authors, groups or ideas as well. Sharing the love renders the post share-able for me!

  2. I think the actual content of a post is the biggest factor but definitely not the only factor. You need to make a post easy to read by using paragraphs, bullet points, bolded text and images/videos to illustrate your points. This coupled with engaging content will definitely help with making your posts more shareable.

    A bit of light hearted humour thrown into the mix won’t do any harm either!

  3. Hi Daniel
    I like your idea of using post it notes for images, I always use at least one image in my posts, I will test the use of a post it note and see how it works for me, do you make your own? if so I would love to know how to do it….
    I always like to put a little of my personality in my post, a little snippet of how my weekend went for example.
    Thanks for sharing
    Pauline

  4. Your idea about “post notes” is a great way to highlight the most important and helpful content. The only problem here is because they are green and the background of your blog is also green, I actually skipped right over them. I would be willing to bet that if you changed this to a complimentary color instead (such as yellow), that you would improve your results. :-)

  5. Hi Daniel,

    Well I think that once you have a good understanding of your readers and what they enjoy reading most on your blog, you can have a pretty good idea on how you can make your posts get more shares.

    Yeah post notes are great and make your blog posts look better. Also having relevant photos helps a lot.

    Thanks for sharing this Daniel, take care.

    ~Philip
    Philip Alex recently posted…The 13 Most Important Features Your Email Opt-In Bonus Must HaveMy Profile

  6. Great post, Daniel. I completely agree with the images advice. As Facebook timelines are becoming more and more visual and Pinterest is growing in popularity, the quality of the images in your posts makes a great deal of impact on how much traffic you get.

    I have even started to see an uptick in traffic coming to my blog from Google images. Authors need to make sure they are putting as much time and energy into their images as they are their posts.

    Cheers!
    –Sean
    Sean Nicholson recently posted…Updated Facebook Tip: Organizing, Moving and Editing Your Photos And AlbumsMy Profile

  7. Daniel, you are so young, so how do you all of this great info? Question, do you really mean to use the post it note photo of to highlight like you did in the green boxes?
    Check your tweets please I had mentioned you in a post.
    Malika Bourne recently posted…Poke, Poke, Pokey FoodMy Profile

    • Hey Malika,

      Well yes, I am young, but I’ve been into blogging since I was like 15, so I guess that plays a role. As for your question, I couldn’t quite understand what you meant. You mean did I wanted to use the photo instead of the green boxes? No, it’s just there to demonstrate my point. :)

      Have a good one!
      Daniel

Before You Leave a Comment...

I really do appreciate all comments and try to reply to every one of you. There's just one thing - please, only use your real name, no business names or keywords!

Speak Your Mind

*

CommentLuv badge

Previous Post:

Next Post:

Get My Newsletter!

Are you making the most out of your marketing efforts? Do you think you can do better?

Sign up for my newsletter and you will get all my social media and blogging insights in your inbox!

Every now and then I will also share with you updates on tools and plugins to improve your results!