What are you sharing? (Image by jzlomek via stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/254271)
One of the primary activities on social media sites is content sharing. Through Facebook, Twitter and other sites, people pass around content they find interesting, entertaining and useful. Content sharing is the fuel for a lot of social media activity. A shared video or blog post can often become the basis for a conversation about that content. If one of your goals online is to build a reputation for expertise in some subject, content sharing is a great way to do that. By sharing links to content about, for example, investing, you position yourself as someone who knows a lot about that topic.
I get a lot of positive comments about the quality and quantity of content I share online. I think it’s been a major factor in the reputation I (think) I’ve built online, as well as the number of followers I have on Twitter (though I am no A-lister — yet). And I think a lot of people are a baffled by how I’m able to consistently share a steady stream of useful, interesting content. So here’s a little tutorial on my “secrets” of effective content sharing.
1. Establish a steady incoming stream of material to review for possible sharing.
Subscribe to blogs and news sites in your niche using an RSS reader such as Google Reader. If you are having trouble finding these sites, check out Alltop. Chances are, it has a pretty good list in your niche.
Subscribe to email newsletters in your niche. Many of the sites you subscribed to will also have email newsletters. Subscribe to those. You may want to use a separate email account (such as a free Yahoo or Gmail account) if you’re worried about your main email inbox being overrun. Some sites will offer more original content via email than they do via RSS.
Blatant self promotion: I offer both an RSS feed and an email subscription — over there on the right side of the page. The email subscription gets you all the blog posts as they’re published, plus additional “bonus” content — extra articles and tips, resource links, free guides and special offers.
Establish Google searches for key terms in your niche. If you have a really broad niche (such as investing or social media or exercise), you may want to keep your search terms narrow and specific, otherwise you’ll get a lot of the same links that you have coming in via the blogs and news sites. If you have a Google account (which I recommend, to access Big G’s many useful and free services), you can get these alerts via email or via RSS feed; choose whichever you find easier to manage.
2. Filter the incoming material for possible sharing.
If you follow the steps above, you will have a lot more material than you’ll actually want to share. Sharing, let’s say, 3-10 useful links a day is good. Sharing 50 will just overwhelm people. Don’t share everything you find. Instead, filter. When you filter — choosing the best content to pass along to your community — you add value.
I recommend filtering in batches, once or twice a day. I usually do this in the morning. What you want to do is pick out the best stuff to share. Here’s my quick-and-dirty two-step algorithm for filtering material quickly.
- Look at the headline or summary. Does it appeal to you? Does it seem interesting, entertaining or useful? Does it seem like it would be relevant to your community? Is it new and interesting? If so, click on the link and open that up in a separate tab in your browser.
- Once you’ve gotten a bunch of tabs opened up, review the material. Again, apply the criteria form Step 1. Pick the best 3-10 (depending on what you think is the ideal daily number for you and your community). Close the tabs for the links you’re NOT going to share.
3. Automate your sharing.
I automate most of my sharing. I do this because I want to reserve my limited “live” time on social media sites for responding and conversation, not pushing out links. There are lots of tools that allow you to schedule social media updates ahead of time. The one I’m now using that I like best is Hootsuite.
Hootsuite is an online app, so it’s available on any computer I have a web browser open on. There’s also an iPhone app version, though I haven’t tried it yet. In addition to scheduling, Hootsuite will also push updates to Facebook and LinkedIn, two of my other primary social media sites. And Hootsuite will integrate with Ping.fm, which in turn can push updates out to dozens of different social sites an status updates. I also like Hootsuite because it has a built-in URL shortener and has click-through tracking built in — useful for measuring how valuable people are finding your updates.
I usually space out my content sharing updates throughout the day, rather than doing a lot at one time. So, for example, I might schedule one at 9 a.m., another at 10:30 a.m., another at noon, another at 2 p.m. and a final one at 4 p.m. I think this allows me more opportunities to get in front of more people in my community, as different people are checking out social sites at different times during the day. However, if you’ve done this and have had a better experience bunching a lot of updates together, I’d be interested in hearing about it.
4. Check in during the day.
Log in to your social sites periodically during the day to respond to and participate to any conversation or reaction that might spring up around your shared content. This could be as simple as thanking people who are retweeting one of your tweets, to weighing in on a conversation that breaks out on Facebook about a link you’ve shared.
5. Measure your results.
If you’re doing this for primarily personal reasons, this may be less important to you. But if you are using this for any kind of social media marketing activity, you’ll want to measure how effective your content sharing activities are. I would like at three primary measurements here:
- How many people clicked through your link to actually look at the content? As I mentioned above, one of the reasons I like Hootsuite is that it has this functionality built in. However, other URL shorteners also offer this.
- How many people shared the content you’re sharing? For example, on Twitter how many people retweeted it? This is a sign that people found your content engaging enough to share with their own communities.
- How much of a conversation sprung up around your content sharing? How many people responded or made a comment about it? How long did those conversations last (how many back and forths).
Those are my “secrets” to effective content sharing online. What do you think? Do you have more tips on sharing content? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Thanks for your quite valuable secrets, but there is a point I want to learn about.
How can I learn how many people shared the content I’m sharing?
If you use a URL shortener such as bit.ly or the shortener built into the Hootsuite Twitter client, you’ll be able to check and see how many people click through on that link, even once other people share it. You could also search for that unique, shortened URL (with Google, in Twitter’s search function, etc.) and get an idea of where else it is showing up. That would give you some idea of how many people are sharing your content again. There is no perfect way to do this that will catch every instance of sharing, of course. But that should help some.