Stiles Says: Welcome to showbiz. You can put your heart and soul into content and have it met with a rousing “who cares?”
Optimize, share, publish. Rinse, repeat.
Not quite…
If you’re creating the quality content that we’ve talked about over and over and over, you should be seeing an upward trend of social sharing, too. But… you’re not. It feels like you’re speaking at a conference and no one showed up. Your content marketing could use some validation from your target audience.
Is your social sharing, or lack thereof, stinkin’ up your game? I’ll share with you why your audience isn’t sharing.
You’re trying too hard to sell
Uh oh. Your sales pitch is showing! So often this is completely noticeable and sometimes makes you cringe. When you’re writing your content, aim for share-ability. Hit your target audience’s pain points instead of selling a product. Make them WANT to say, “Hey, that really solved my problem!” There are ways to weave sales-oriented content in with your posts. A call-to-action button at the end of a blog post eliminates the need for overtly sale-sy posts but still converts leads.
Your content sucks
No one wants to hear that – they really dont. But some need to listen. This is a downright hard problem to diagnose when you’re tied so closely to content creation. You’re not grabbing their attention, which needs to happen in order for them to engage. If your content doesn’t take a valuable slant on your part of the industry, it has been poorly executed.
Your target doesn’t care
If you missed the boat in speaking to your audience, they wont engage. If they’re not engaged, they’re bouncing. In what ways can you engage? Crowdsource opinions, ask your audience to share, ask for feedback, ask for social sharing! Close that communication gap. Heck, if you’ve missed an opportunity to really hit the pain points of your target audience, they’re not coming back to you for more.
On a similar note, could it be because your audience doesn’t even know you’re there? Establishing your presence through up-to-date SEO efforts is a good way to gain traction with your target audience through search. Once they find you and find out your content rocks, they’ll be more apt to share.
You didn’t make sharing easy
Alright, let’s talk “above the scroll.” If your social sharing buttons aren’t easy to find without having to look too hard, your target will move on. Whether you agree or not, people are lazy; do what you can to adapt and overcome. My goodness, there’s even a “Tweet This” tool so you can embed tweets right into your post so it’s easy on your readers!
+.5 Didn’t share it yourself
For shame. You can’t be expecting your target audience to be sharing if you don’t take the time to share it yourself. Establishing your brand starts with demonstrating your social media prowess personally. Promote every last drop out of your own content. Get your employees to share and take part in your social media promotion, too.
The best part about all of these is that you can adjust fire and fix them. You can modify your content marketing to suit the needs of your prospects. You can create more social media marketing that drives prospects towards your site. If you need help getting a lift off the ground with your social media efforts, check out our Social Media Optimization Playbook.
