How To Leverage Your Network To Increase Your Social Shares

We already understand the concept of the power of reach through social media. Our ability to share our message with tens of thousands or more and then in turn have a certain percentage of those folks share your message forward to their networks, is one of the things that makes social media so powerful!

Most often, however, we simply send out our updates and then hope for the best. What if we could approach the task of social shares in a more organized, efficient, and focused manner that would also significantly increase these shares? We can do this by leveraging our networks.

The first thing we are going to want to do is compose our update and we will use Twitter for our example. Why Twitter? Twitter imposes the most restrictions on the size our update (140 characters total including spaces) and anything that we can post on Twitter can easily be updated to any of our other social networks.

Compose Your Update

When creating our update, we will want to ensure that certain practices are followed. We want our update to be both effective and easy for others to share!

We have 140 characters to work with but, we also want folks to share our updates with others. On Twitter this takes the form of a retweet (RT). There are two types of retweets … old style and new style. “New style” is a one-click share that does not add any extra characters to the tweet. “Old style”, which is still preferred by many, allows the user to share your tweet and also add in some personal comments. The format for this is (we will use my twitter handle) RT @craigmjamieson (body of tweet). We have just added 19 total characters to this update. Therefore, if your update is already 140 characters, this is not going to work without requiring that person to do some editing. I would suggest that your tweet be no more than 90-100 characters tops and this will allow for the old style retweet and maybe some personal observation by the tweeter like … “this rocks!”. If you are the one retweeting, please be sure to leave a space between the RT and the twitter handle as well as one between that and the body of the tweet. This will ensure that the original tweeter will see your kind action!
If you are sharing a link, you will want a way to track the number of times that link has been clicked. Twitter now offers analytics for this. Links formatted by HootSuite (ow.ly) and Bit.ly will also provide analytics and will automatically shorten your links as well. Buffer has its own analytics regardless of link shortening method. This will help us to determine how this tweet (topic) has been received by others. Does it resonate with our followers? If it does not, you will wish to change things up until you find the formula that does.
Whether or not you are sharing a link, an awesome and enticing title/description will encourage others to share. Just as importantly, your specific custom wording is searchable on Twitter which means that you will be able to track who has shared your tweet with others even if not in a retweet format.
Hashtags (#social) that are applicable to your updates can also be helpful because … anyone can click on a hashtag and find all updates on Twitter that are using this same hashtag. I.E. easily searchable!
Asking others to “pls RT” as a part of your own update is perfectly acceptable. Those who ask this will generally get more retweets.
As a rule, I would say always thank others for sharing your tweets forward. When you do this, and also RT their updates, you are already well on your way to leveraging your network to increase shares!

When, Where, And How To Share

Certainly, we do not want our updates to go out one after the other. We also may want to repeat share our updates at different times and on different days. There are several tools that can assist us with this.

Buffer will allow you to schedule your updates to one or more social networks on either a metered schedule (one per hour for example) or on a specific day and time.
HootSuite and SproutSocial will also allow you to schedule updates on one or more networks or they will also choose an optimum day and time to share your updates based on the best times to reach your specific groups of followers.
Applications like Twitterfeed will automatically share your new posts to the social networks as will HootSuite, SproutSocial, and dlvr.it.
When sharing updates to multiple networks, please be sure that your update is appropriate for each network chosen. People on LinkedIn really do not care about what you had for breakfast or what cute tricks your dog can do (or your kid).
Don’t forget to share to pages and groups on the social networks if your update is pertinent to these sites!
If you are sharing articles from your site, be sure to have sharing buttons installed on every post to make sharing easy and seamless for others. You also need to provide “follow” buttons on your website in order to make it easy for people to connect with you.
You can also install plugins on WordPress sites that will automatically scan your existing posts and randomly select (you can control this) those for future automatic publishing. I am using Tweetily.
Consider featuring your latest post as a part of your signature line on emails. I use WiseStamp for Gmail.

Leverage Your Network

Now comes the fun part! This will certainly work best, and will probably only work at all, if you have taken the time, and made the effort required, to find and build relationships with others. Hey, we are all in this together so what say we join forces and increase shares for each other? #Win.

Put a group together. Start with the right people. I call these “power partners”. These folks target your same market but with non-competing services. In other words, people who follow them/are connected to them will likely be the same people who could use your product or service as well.

There are a few ways to coordinate this effort but, somebody will have to take the lead. You can:

Automate – Use a service like GaggleAmp or Addvocate that will monitor each other’s websites and automatically create updates to be shared by your group members. I am using GaggleAmp with one group and I am emailed a notice every time there are new messages to share. It is super fast and super easy. You can even make a contest out of it and award points for each share with a prize going to the monthly winner. Finally, at least on GaggleAmp, members can compose and suggest messages for sharing by the group. These are paid services.
Manual – Once again, somebody will need to take the lead. This person will compose tweets for each member based on articles published and/or member suggestions and then compile these into a single email that will be sent to each member weekly. Copy and paste. Free and works great!

You can also …

Going back to Twitterfeed, HootSuite, SproutSocial, or dlvr.it, you can set up feeds from each other’s sites and auto-share new articles when they are published.
Even if you do not create a group, you can still compose updates and email them to selected people asking them if they would please consider sharing these with their network. Be sure to express your willingness to return these favors!
You might also check out Triberr which is a service where article writers join “tribes” in an effort to promote each other’s articles.

Hope this helps! Can you share any suggestions of things you have done on your own which really seem to work?

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

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Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services

Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!