The Delicate Art of Content Sharing

We’ve all been there.

You write a blog post, and wonder why nobody is liking or sharing your post. Well, there are several common reasons as to why your content is not being shared. 

First, is your content good enough? If not, then you may want to go back to the drawing board. If you find your content is good enough (and have had other people review it too), then there can be several reasons and issues as to why your content is not being shared:

You Don’t Have Social Share Buttons On Your Blog

How many people are going to copy/paste the URL of the blog post into twitter or Facebook? Not too many ““ unless your post is so great that people will just go and copy and paste your URL.

So, be sure you have social share buttons on your blog! There are plenty of great WordPress plugins ready for this function, like ShareThis.

ShareThis has access to 120 social channels like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and many many others.

With tools like ShareThis, there’s no excuse for not having at least the two main social networks (Facebook and Twitter) on your blog to share quickly and easily.

You Don’t Have an Easy Way for People to Share Things On Your Blog

There are blogs with plugins out there that require you to go through several steps in order to share your content. If you have to go to a page, click to close a window that displays an obtrusive ad, click to register to login, and then login just to share, no one is going to share your content.

There are too many steps. Instead, it will be better to have a one step process on the social share buttons, assuming someone is already logged into their social network. They can click on the button, click tweet, and bam, they can share it just fine.

Your Content is Not Appealing or is Very Difficult to Read

Let’s face facts: if your content is riddled with grammatical errors, spelling errors, and is very difficult to read, not many people will want to share it with their friends.

The content should also be exciting. Not many people will want to share boring content with their friends.

I don’t want to hear that you’re in a boring industry, because in any industry, it is possible to make content exciting. Even content about boxes can be made into interesting content with the right writers. Yes, I said boxes.

Errors are Showing Up in the Sharing Process

Did you install the plugin correctly? Did you follow all instructions to the letter?

If not, then the slightest mis-step can cause your plugin to not allow users to share your content. Before you launch your blog, make sure that your social sharing options are working just fine, that they are cross platform compatible, etc.

If your content still isn’t being shared, perhaps you have a content problem? If so, then you may need to go back to the drawing board and re-write your content for quality, rather than just for spamming the search engines.

And did you use a content spinner? Then go back to the drawing board and re-write your content the right way.

Remember, quality content counts when it comes to a website, so if you aren’t getting shared despite those issues, make sure that your content has been written in a high enough quality for your audience.