5 Tips to Social Media Optimization

Optimizing Your Content for Social Media

Expand each section to learn how you can optimize your social media content.

1. Prepare your site pages and blog posts for sharing via social media.

Increase your linkability.
To optimize a site for social media, you will need to increase the linkability of the content. Adding a blog is a great step. You can also create white papers or ebooks or even simply aggregate content that exists elsewhere into a useful format. Your visitors should want to link to your content.

Make tagging and bookmarking easy.
Use social media share buttons connected to bookmarking sites, social news sites, social event sites and other social media channels; add tagging options; add RSS feeds.

One of the most popular plug-ins of this kind is AddThis. AddThis is compatible with any website, most popular blogging platforms (Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, Tumblr), social networks (e.g. Facebook), most popular content management systems (Joomla! and Drupal), email newsletters, Microsoft Office Live and RSS Feeds.

Add share-this buttons at the end of each article, news or blog post, rather than creating one share button for the entire newsletter or blog.

Know how to target your audience.
You will have to understand both the subject matter and the community by living and breathing it. This is the only way to create content or marketing ideas compelling to a niche. Create ideas which resonate with your audience, and you can forge great relationships and build vital brand allies.

2. Connect your site and/or blog to social media channels.

Use the YouTube or Vimeo video sharing options on your site. This will make it easy for your visitors to socialize, tag videos and post comments.
Incorporate third-party community functionalities like images and slide share. Create profiles on slideshow sharing sites (SlideShare, Slideboom, etc.) and display Flickr pictures on your site.

3. Add social networking features to your site or blog.

All social networks offer widgets that you can use on your site to connect your users to the social networks and let people chat online, buy virtual gifts, play games, take quizzes, take part in polls and ratings, share photos, videos and other media ALL without leaving your site.

Community building widgets.
Use Google+ on your blog and add Google+ badge. With it you can create a community, see who your members are and reach out to them if you choose.

Subscription widgets.
Choose a suitable widget that lets your visitors subscribe to your RSS feed easily.

Social networking widgets.
Social networking widgets encourage visitors to connect with you on Twitter, Facebook, BlogCatalog and other key social bookmarking and social networking sites.

Content sharing widgets.
The AddThis widget at the end of each article makes it very easy for you to share content with friends in your networks.

4. Create the type of content that makes people really want to share it with others.

Creating content that drives people to really want to share it socially is very teachable. You have to start with something interesting, unique or funny: a survey or some research on a topic related to your niche, a funny story, cartoon, comics or the like.

Once you’ve written your content then post it on your site and announce it using microblogging services, social networks, your blog, etc. In other words, circulate it on the Web.

Consider using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Sphinn, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo! Answers and other social media channels of distribution, depending on the targeted demographic.

5. Discover what content is popular among your social audience.

The pages that get the most social engagement (likes, hares, comments) are the pages your audience is interested in. Analyze what type of content (infographics, blog posts, video, images, how-to’s, etc.) and what topics attract the readers on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Use the Social Citations tool to discover what your social audience likes.

Consider creating more content of the most shareable types to attract new readers and grow a bigger community.