Social Sharing is a concept we learned as children at home and in school. Some kids didn’t always enjoy sharing, remember? They were the toy and candy hoggers. But other kids loved sharing. They couldn’t wait to let us taste their favorite treat or take a spin on their new bike. Luckily for us, social media is filled to the brim with the latter: The Sharers.
Sharing is the key to making great connections in social media. And quite frankly, it makes for smart business. But here’s something more business owners need to start doing: Ask for the Share. Before anyone recoils at the thought of being so bold, let us explain.
We know there is quite a bit of passive sharing which takes place in social media. Passive sharing is when a business owner has a quiet little share link placed just before or after a post, making it easy for someone to click on the link and share it forward.
However, it’s now acceptable to be proactive and ask our followers to share our post if they like the content. It doesn’t need to be done with each post or tweet. It can be done selectively if that feels more comfortable. But it is a habit many small business owners might want to consider building into their social marketing strategy.
When we ask for the social share with humor and respect, it has the ability to provide the following benefits:
With so much information scrolling across people’s social media pages they can forget to go back and share the links they liked. To keep our posts and tweets from being relegated to the, “I’ll come back and share this when I’m done reading all of my newsfeed” syndrome, we can ask for the share right in our post. Or we can insert a Share Box in our post that will open up when someone starts reading our content, prompting that person to share it. The benefit of asking for the share is in getting it.
Another benefit comes when we analyze the metrics of our social media sharing. Metrics allow us to start identifying the main influencers that consistently share our content, which content is getting the most activity, and what social networks these influencers use and share our information on. If we are not on these same networks, we might want to be.
And let’s not forget the importance of social validation. When we ask for the share, get it, and then engage with our followers in the conversation resulting from the share, we build trust and recognition within our social community. That’s social validation.
As kids, we are taught to share; as adults we are taught to ask for what we want. Why not build both actions into our social marketing strategy?
