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How to Make the Most of Social Media with WordPress
There’s more to social media than virtual socializing.
With over half the global population on some social platform (except MySpace… because UGH), it’d be downright bizarre for you and your business to stay away from it. Statistically, there’s a high chance that at least half of your target audience is constantly tweeting, checking Newsfeeds, uploading pictures, and/or more through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, what have you.
Even the platforms themselves are aware of their vast reach and are now commercializing it for businesses: with paid adverts, virtual assistants and apps (see Facebook’s ‘M’), featured listings, etc.
The point is: Social media is perfect for engagement and building a name for your brand. The sheer numbers of users who can be reached make time and effort spent creating social media strategies worth it.
So where does WordPress weigh in?
If you are reading this article, you likely have a sweet little WordPress website out and about. In this post, we’ll take a look at some time-tested tips that will let you make the most of social sharing with wonderful tools available for WordPress.
1. Sweet-N’-Sharable Content
No-one wants to read (much less share) those grammatically inaccurate posts shoehorning your services.
People share content that holds a personal value to them: it could be humor, emotional/sentimental value, nostalgia, topical issues, etc. Read the first line of this point again.
To create truly remarkable, share-worthy content, know what your audience wants and expects from you. For instance, a personal care brand for women can create oodles of content centered on not just their business, but the entire beauty and wellness industry. If you have done your homework (read: audience research), you’ll be able to tap into your audience’s hearts and give them exactly what they want (and respond to).
It’ll take time, but so does everything else: from SEO to building a steady inflow of traffic, and so on. Analyze the content that has hit the right spot, whether it’s by you or your competitors.
Use social media monitoring tools like Unmetric, Hootsuite, etc. to keep pace with your content’s performance and to keep a lookout for what your competition is up to.
Tip: Content with list-icles (list-style articles) and images, posted with consistency, go a long way to solidifying your status on social media. Use tools like CoSchedule (integrates beautifully with WordPress) to create and manage a publishing calendar.
2. Be Network-Savvy
Platform matters…
Even if you have created a wonderful post about why Batman will always be better than Superman, (topical + hilarious + incites nerd rage = approved) you can’t just go and blithely share it on all 26 of your social media pages without thought.
Simple, underrated minutiae of social sharing like platform-specific format can have a huge impact on your content’s share-ability. For instance:
…favors awesome (but short) headlines with an attention grabbing featured-image to go with the title. Your opening paragraph will also make an appearance, so take care there.
…is a ‘nightmare’ difficulty-setting on its own. With 140 characters limit, you can barely decide if you want to give a sneak peak, a summary, or just announcement for the new post. I’ll leave it up to your own analysis to find the approach that works best for your channel and niche.
Can be used to publish entire posts – You may want to create some content specifically for your LinkedIn professionals.
..is all about visuals – so use it to share industry relevant graphics, infographic, images, etc. Text in graphic is okay, as long as it’s legible upfront (without magnifying) in general cases. For WordPress, use WordPress plugins like, Pinterest Pin It Button For Images or the Pinterest Follow Button only if your visual content is worth it, otherwise you’re just adding bloat to pages.
- Google+
Works in much the same way as Facebook: Titles + Features Image, with opening lines. Use The Google+ plugin for sharing WordPress posts in G+ friendly format.
These formats should also help you understand which channels you want to be on. For instance, graphic designers, photographers, etc. would obviously profit from some time well spent on Pinterest, Behance, Dribble, while B2C service providers have a lot to gain from a careful combination of all of the above (and more).
3. The Viral Frenzy
Be prepared for the best and the worst.
Everyone wants the mythical ‘15 minutes of fame’ with social media. But going viral is more than that. Quite frankly, it’s a gift that keeps on giving, long after the frenzy has settled and things have quieted down a bit. Remember, nothing’s ever erased from the deep, dark recesses of the internet.
You can’t administer this, but you can certainly encourage your content to go viral by making it topical, unique, and hilarious. Turns out, everyone wants a laugh nowadays (why else would the cat memes be so freakin’ popular?)
So while you have your best creative minds knocking their heads together to create content with high viral-potential, you can ensure that when that happens (stay positive, Steve!), your WordPress website can handle the incoming flood of traffic.
Stay in top shape with ironclad WordPress maintenance and performance optimization plans, along with high-end hosting and content delivery networks.
4. The WordPress-Social Media Toolkit
Let’s get right down to it then.
WordPress has countless social plugins to allow your readers to share content from your website/blog. This list of the best WordPress social sharing plugins by popular web host Page.ly has some great recommendations; pick the one that suits your website best.
For easy management of social media channels, use Buffer or CoSchedule. These tools integrate well with WordPress and handle analytics, web-curated-content posting, and more for heavy-duty social media automation.
Tip: Don’t forget some of your old site content. Mix it up and share it with #Flashback (or something similar) to get it some attention.
Endnote
Using WordPress is the best thing you could do for your online visibility: with solid scaffolding built for enhanced SEO and a whole litany of Social sharing tools at your disposal, there’s nothing you can’t do.