Most of the social shares are related to almost no traffic.
That makes the majority of the social parts sound pretty meaningless, doesn’t it?
Not correct.
This is the deal:
Social shares that send almost no traffic to your website can be useful.
In this post, you’ll learn exactly how these seemingly meaningless social shares can help your business.
Let’s step in:
Google indexes your content faster
After over 10 years of building and marketing websites, I’ve been asked this question countless times …
“How can I get Google to index my content faster?”
And no, it’s not about buying an “indexing service” from a Shonky web host.
The most common method is to submit your sitemap in the Google Search Console.
But there is a faster way:
Tweets with popular hashtags.
One of the great things about Twitter is that Google uses it as a news source.
It’s not like Facebook’s walled garden. Twitter crawls and indexes tweets.
So, if you want your content to be indexed quickly, tweet it with popular hashtags.
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Social shares can improve your search engine rankings
There’s a lot of confusion around the impact social shares have on search rankings.
This is partly due to the enormous volume of correlation studies. Correlation is not the same as causality, so I usually take this with a pinch of salt.
However, the benefits of social media shares for SEO are obvious.
First of all, social shares are a direct ranking factor in Bing. This has been confirmed in Bing’s Webmaster Policy.
So more social shares directly improve your rankings in Bing.
What about google?
Social shares don’t directly affect your Google ranking. However, they can have indirect effects. More content about your brand can only be a good thing.
Whether it’s social media posts or articles on other websites. It’s all helpful.
All of this content can indirectly help your rankings. For example, collecting links and doing more searches for brands are the most important.
There is also co-citing and co-occurrence which could be a contributing factor.
Let me explain:
With co-citation, Google will take note of simply having more brand names on the web. Regardless of whether these mentions actually link to your website.
If they occur at the same time, Google will examine keywords and brands in close proximity to one another.
It remains to be seen exactly how much co-citing and co-occurrence can help. Only Google really knows.
However, if you make your content more visible on the web, you can get more links and other opportunities – these will benefit directly from your rankings.
Take that away? Social shares are a good thing for your SEO no matter how much traffic they’re referring to.
Note: There are people in SEO who say, “Social media doesn’t affect SEO.” This type of statement is out of context and easily misleading. And what they really mean is “Social media has no direct impact on Google rankings.” – As I mentioned above, there are indirect benefits that are worth pursuing.
A single click can generate significant revenue
A few clicks couldn’t possibly have a meaningful impact on your sales, right?
Well it depends on your business.
If you rely on ads for ads or affiliate marketing, it probably doesn’t.
But if you run a service-oriented company? Damn it. It can!
It doesn’t matter if it’s social shares, guest posting, or some other tactic. A single click can generate significant revenue.
I know because I’ve seen a single click turn into a customer who has spent over $ 40,000 over the life of their account.
In fact, I helped build an agency based on guest posting and social shares that received little traffic. A 6-digit deal in 3-4 months. Crazy, right?
In terms of traffic referenced to our website, there are those who would consider our guest posting and social media strategy a failure.
But the receipts tell a different story.
It is similar with many freelancers and agencies.
Every click is important.
How to get more social shares
You need to regularly share your own blog posts. Social scheduling software saves an enormous amount of time here.
But how do you get more social shares from other people?
There are tactics you can use to encourage social sharing on your own blog. Some of these can be implemented using the popular Social Snap WordPress plugin. Read my tutorial here.
The challenge here is that this tactic relies on you actually having blog traffic.
And they can be a little slow to get the ball rolling.
A faster approach is to use content promotion platforms.
There are three in particular that work well for getting more stocks.
Triberr has been around the longest and can be used free of charge. It is based on the concept of mutual sharing. You can create tribes, invite other users to join them, etc. You share other people’s stuff and they share yours.
Missinglettr (aff), this popular social media tool, has launched an add-on called Curate. You can use it to source content for sharing and share your own content.
I’ve had good results so far with Missinglettr, but there are some niches that don’t resonate with this platform very much. Still, it’s worth a try.
Quuu Promote (aff) is my content promotion platform. It’s the most expensive of the three, but I’ve had the best results with this platform. They have the strongest user base, which generally means more stakes in a wider variety of niches.
Now there are some limitations with these tools:
First a quick disclosure: I am a partner of Missinglettr and Quuu Promote. So take what you want. I’ve had good results with these platforms, but your mileage may vary.
Now for the important part … how to get results from these types of platforms.
Note: The thinking behind this applies to getting results with any tool, tactic, or strategy that you implement.
Experimentation is key with these types of tools.
From time to time I come across “case studies” from bloggers who share two articles with extreme niche attractiveness and find that these platforms are not working. At all. For each. What?!
Every good experiment requires a larger pool of content. Otherwise the results are meaningless.
If you want a tool (or even a tactic / strategy) to work for you, the first thing you need to do is look at the variables that can affect your results.
The following variables must be taken into account for these tools:
- Your headline
- Your niche (broad vs limited attraction)
- The time / day that you submit content
- The volume of content you submitted
- The popularity of your niche for this platform
- The time it takes to publish planned posts
Remember: some content falls flat on your face, and that’s not a bad thing. If so, it is likely due to one or more of the variables above.
Take Missinglettr Curate as an example.
Some of my posts worked really well on this platform while others fell flat.
I can usually guess which articles are not going to do well. Reviews will always have problems as this content type doesn’t match well with social shares.
It’s usually the more unique and interesting headlines that do better. Especially those with broad appeal.
Therefore, it is extremely important to work on your headline writing skills to ensure that you are getting the maximum benefit from such platforms.
Packing
As we’ve seen, social shares that refer to very little traffic can still be useful.
They can help your content get indexed faster by search engines. They can help with your SEO from a broader perspective.
They can also help you get more customers.
Especially if you are planning to start your blog or if your blog is in the early stages of growth, these clicks are even more important.
It is these visitors who can become regular readers. And when all goes well, some of these readers become friends.
So take every opportunity to make your content more visible. Even if the metrics don’t sound too impressive, they can still help you and open up exciting new opportunities.
What is the next step? Give your readers a better reason to return to your blog by building your email list. Read my definitive guide to creating lists to learn how.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. This means that we may pay a small commission when you make a purchase.
