Is your business keeping up with the ever evolving blogging industry? And most importantly, are you taking any steps to make it dead easy for your readers to share your articles?
All recent research I found points towards the fact that blogging is gaining importance month over month. In 2011 alone, 14 million new blogs were added to the blogosphere.
A lot of emphasis is placed on producing the best content for your blog to drive leads to your site. And rightly so. Yet, with this post I want to go into detail about how a few great new WordPress plugins can give you a huge boost of exposure for your articles.
1. Digg Digg – More Powerful Sharing Buttons
Digg Digg is a sharing plugin, that has gotten a big overhaul recently. It offers you a slick sharebar on the left-hand side of your articles that floats down as you read.
Of course you can also decide to put buttons at the top or bottom of your articles if you prefer not to show the sliding bar. What is also worth mentioning is that the plugin features a vast amount of services, including Social Media newcomers Pinterest and Buffer as buttons.
How does it increase sharing of your posts?
There was recently some stunning research put out by BrightEdge. The company examined how the better placing of sharing buttons on your blog can drive more Social Media traffic.
A growing number of consumers trust blogs are as likely to have the same amount of sharing as traditional online news articles. This makes sharing buttons even more crucial. And the results are quite stunning:
The research found that better placing of sharing buttons can increase sharing of articles by up to 7 times, compared to those blogs who neglect it.
2. Simple Reach – The New York Times Slider Plugin For Any Business
Have you ever read an article on the New York Times? Half-way through reading a post there is a little box slides in, suggesting you to read another article from the site. And that is exactly what The Slide does from analytics company SimpleReach.
It is a simple WordPress plugin, that will present your readers with other very valuable articles from your site, as they read through your posts. It is a fantastic add-on to keep visitors longer on your site and allow them to share your articles more easily. Here is why.
How does it increase sharing of your posts?
Now the plugin doesn’t just present you with any article that slides in. It is a highly developed algorithm from social analytics company Simple Reach, that finds the most related content based on the article you are reading.
I have also reached out to the founder of the company Eric Kim, to get some data on the plugin. He mentioned to me that on average, they see a 3-4% click through rate on the suggested post presented through the slide. This is higher than any advertising banner ever achieved.
3. W3 Total Cache – 10 Times Faster Performance Of Your Blog
Another great plugin I want to introduce to you is called W3 Total Cache. It is a performance plugin. Tests from the plugin have shown to speed up the loading time of your blog by up to 10 times (according to their company website).
By having W3 Total Cache installed, every aspect of your site will be cached. This means there is less downloading time for your visitors and everything will be snappy as it should be. And here is why this is so important:
How does it increase sharing of your posts?
A while back we looked at how an increase in page loading time affects visitor abandonment. In an easy to understand infographic, they evaluated how faster sites can increase time spent on site and probability of sharing.
Here are a few examples of what massive difference a faster site can make:
- Google.com: A decrease of loading of search results by 0.5 seconds will lead to a 20% loss of traffic.
- Amazon.com: A speed decrease of only 0.1 seconds will lead to 1% loss of sales.
So to get interaction and sharing of your articles up, simply making your site fast, might just give you an immense boost.
4. Facebook Commenting Plugin – Truly Social Interaction For Your Blog
With over 400,000 blogs that have already installed the Facebook commenting plugin, the positive aspects of the platform can’t be denied. Existing commenting systems such as Disqus and Lifefyre definitely have a strong competitor here.
The Facebook commenting plugin is super easy to setup. You put the customized code snippet in the comments section of your theme and you are done.
How does it increase sharing of your posts?
The biggest advantage I believe that the Facebook commenting system brings is the option to post to your Facebook wall at the same time of commenting. Using this on my own blog for the past few months, this has brought a large spike in Facebook shares for my site.
At the same time, you are able to give users a much easier way to interact with your content. There is no need to sign-in and users can just write away, as soon as they have something to say.
5. Social Metrics – Track Your Social Shares More Efficiently
The last plugin I want to mention here is one called Social Metrics. It is a fantastic solution that helps you track the number of shares of all your articles across any social network.
What I like best is that you can filter by date or category, to make it easier to understand how well your posts are doing. The compact format is definitely a great improvement to get an overview of the sharing activity of your posts.
How does it increase sharing of your posts?
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve.” Goes one of the most important sayings in business. And this is particularly true for tracking of your social mentions I found.
There were two things that helped me a great deal to increase sharing after installing Social Metrics:
- First, I was able to see that some of my articles would perform much better on networks I wasn’t particularly using, such as StumbleUpon for example.
- Secondly, I could filter out the best performing content more easily and analyse what makes my readers share. Since then I have focused on strongly on producing and replicating those posts that performed best.
Those are my 5 top tips to help your blog posts get more shares and better leads for your business. Want more? Here are a few from Neil Patel:
Over to you now. Do you take any steps to make sharing of your articles easier and better for your readers? Let me know your thoughts below.
About the Author: Leo Widrich is the Co-Founder of Buffer, a smarter way to share your Social Media updates. He blogs more Social Media tips on the Buffer blog and feel free to hit him up @leowid on Twitter anytime.
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