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Tips for Getting More Facebook Shares

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By Charles Mburugu

Everyone would want to have their Facebook posts shared by as many people as possible. A share is somewhat like a vote of confidence, showing that someone values your content enough to share it with others. Therefore, getting many shares enhances your credibility and exposes your Facebook profile or page to a wider audience.

Here are some guidelines which will help you increase your Facebook shares.

1. Post at the right time

When you post on Facebook is as important as what you post. Therefore, you need to take time to study the Facebook habits of your audience. In most cases, people look at their updates first thing in the morning, during their lunch break, after work or on weekends. This means that anything posted during business hours might be missed by your target audience. However, not all audiences are the same. Study your audience and find out what would work best for them.

2. Be relevant

People like Facebook pages or follow profiles which cover topics of interest to them. Therefore, you cannot afford to just post anything on your Facebook profile. Make sure all the content published on your profile is relevant to your theme as well as your audience. For instance, if your page is for a gym, it would be inappropriate to post anything about home improvement.

3. Use videos and photos

Sharing visual content can be very powerful way of capturing the interest of your audience. When people are scanning through text-only updates, they could easily miss something. However, when updates are accompanied by videos and photos, your audience is more likely to pay attention and even share with others. Therefore, sharing relevant visual content on your Facebook profile is a very effective way of increasing the level of audience interaction.

4. Have a clear call to action

If you want people to follow your profile, like a page, share updates or simply comment, ask them to do so. This means that all your posts should be accompanied with an appropriate call to action. When you tell people what exactly you want them to do, they are likely to heed the call to action.

5. Post educational content

Most people would love to learn something new in their topics of interest. This is why it is important to occasionally share relevant educational material on your Facebook page or profile. Every time you publish a how-to post on your blog, remember to share the link as a Facebook update, as well as a brief summary of what the post is all about.

6. Share useful lists

People love lists. Take time to create a great list on a relevant topic and share it with your Facebook followers or fans. Where possible, you could present it in form of an infographic. If the content is great and presented in a professional way, it could easily go viral, thus ensuring more visibility for your page name or profile.

7. Inject some humor

Your Facebook page or profile does not have to be dull and boring. A sprinkling of humor can do wonders in getting the attention of your audience. When people come across something funny, they are likely to share it with others in their social network. Therefore, take time to look for humorous content which can be shared once in a while.

What are you doing to increase your Facebook engagement?

Author’s Bio: Charles Mburugu is a HubSpot-certified content writer/marketer for B2B, B2C and SaaS companies. He has worked with brands such as GetResponse, Neil Patel, Shopify, 99 Designs, Oberlo, Salesforce and Condor. Check out his portfolio and connect on LinkedIn.

What Makes an Irresistible Business?

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Do You Make Sure the Customers Who Want to Love You Can?

Irresistible is what attracts new customers and brings them back again and again. When you’re irresistible, you become unique. The competition becomes irrelevant, because they aren’t you. Irresistible combines solid business with great relationships to

  • Remove what customers don’t want.
  • Enhance what customers love.
  • Add something unexpected they would die for.
  • and offering options that fit easily into customers’ lives.

Making sure customers who want to love you CAN is the best way to grow a business.

What Makes an Irresistible Business?

Irresistible Business is the game changing strategy that defines great business growth in the context of a marketplace that is now customer controlled and both online and off. It reaches inside the business to check the models for irresistibility with questions such as these:

  • On Execution: Does your model / process match your business, your partners, your vendors, and your internal customers? Does it work for them and for you?
  • On Engagement: Does your model match your market? Does every interaction make customers’ lives easier, faster, and more meaningful? Does what you do fit easily into their lives?
  • On Extraordinary Value: Do you add a unique value proposition that only you can deliver. How can you make your business model itself a barrier to entry?

The statistics prove that customer investment and word of mouth marketing are most effective business development initiatives any company can have to build a brand, to build sales, to build lasting value.

In this new customer-driven, attention economy, every business – corporate to company of one – needs a serious focused strategy designed to raise them to class of their own. Huge investments in low ROI advertising and clever SEO won’t work if the company can’t be found above the noise or can’t adequately engage customers in an irresistible relationship. The game of business has become one of building lasting communities of fiercely loyal fans.

It’s no longer if you build it, they will come, now it’s if you let them help you build it, they will bring their friends. What company wouldn’t want a community of fiercely loyal fans?

How are you making your business irresistible to the people who want to love you?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Engagement: Five Keys to Get People Inside What You Write

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You Already Know This

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After decades of print publishing, writing publicly was never a big deal for me. I didn’t have a shy moment about my first blog post. I still consider it fine writing. I did watch my stats to see whether anyone read it. Waited days on end for my first comment from someone I didn’t know.

But I was surprised to find the difference of having an audience show up soon after I wrote.
And there was the difference in how they responded.
When I’d been in publishing, people responding had always been responding from a work point of view.
This responding to ideas because they were important, interesting, thought-provoking, or intriguing was something new.

People were connecting by what they said.
Minds were meeting in what they typed and what they read.

It was different than print.

Words like conversation and community took on new meaning.
We explored what they meant.

It was different from print.

I began observing, testing, asking, listening, and learning.
Yet the more I started trying, less I was succeeding.

Then, I came face to face with the answer in a short note someone wrote on his own blog about my writing. He said my blog posts were so well written the only response he could come up with was “beautiful job.”

The blog posts I’d been writing were full, finished, final and composed.
There wasn’t much room for anyone to participate in them.

I began observing, testing, asking, listening, and learning again. What I learned were four keys to keeping the conversation open. These won’t surprise or stun you. You already know them. They’re what we all do when we talk to any person we value.

Do these four things and you’ll find people getting inside what you’re writing.

  1. Come down from the podium. Talk to your audience like a people who can listen. Let them be as smart as you are, even when they don’t know what you do.

  2. Don’t tie things up with a bow. Leave what you say a little unfinished. Don’t try so hard to ferret out everything on your bulleted list. Don’t ask and answer every question. Then your audience has room to add a word in. When a talking person fills in every idea and detail before anyone else talks, that’s called a speech. The response becomes applause or an awful silence.

  3. Blog your experience. Information is everywhere, but your experience of that information is unique and interesting. People respond to what you share that’s you. I don’t have to see myself responding the way you would for what you say to resonate.

  4. Care about what you’re saying. Care so much that you write without hesitation, without apology. Don’t shy away from the true north of what it means to you. Anything less is too complicated and makes me nervous for you. If you don’t care enough to put yourself into it, why would I care enough to read it?

  5. Make the ending satisfying and about them. Let them know again why they care about what they just read. If you end with a question, think about what you’re asking. Could you answer it? What sort answer are you expecting? As a reader would you take time to answer it?

Nothing stunning. It’s remembering that the people reading are people who want to connect with us not people who want to grade our papers. It all gets easier when we remember to let people be part of what we’re writing.

Have you found things get easier when you focus on the people reading?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

An Engagement Checklist for Successful Business

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A Guest Post by
Shawn Hessinger

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As the experts and this blog often state, you’re only a stranger once. You’re a stranger up until the moment you extend your hand and introduce yourself. From there, you begin the process of becoming an acquaintance, and eventually, a friend. And social media has taught us that’s where we want to be. People don’t want to do business with logos anymore. Perhaps they never did. They want to do business with people they know, people in their network. To get in their network, you start by saying hello. You engage.

I know. In recent months you’ve no doubt heard the term ‘engagement’ more times than you can recall. Every social media expert wants to lecture you on its importance. But what does it all mean? As a marketing professional, a blogger, an entrepreneur – what types of customer engagement should you be worrying about, and how can you be sure you’re doing enough to not just stop being a stranger, but to start becoming a friend?

Below you’ll find a quick checklist to help you pinpoint opportunities and create new customer touch points.

Are you creating content?

Creating content on a consistent basis is one of the most powerful ways to engage your audience. It gives them something to engage with, while also showing your interest in getting to know them. The simple fact that you’ve penned that blog post, created that resource, or published that newsletter tells your audience you want to be part of the conversation, and you want to create a different type of relationship with them. Your post is your offering to a more intimate conversation. How you choose to create content is up to you. Whether you start a WordPress blog, a Tumblr account or create videos over at YouTube, is your choice. What matters is that you create content. That you give your customers (and potential customers) something to introduce them to your brand, and that shows them what you believe in. The first step of engaging is bringing something to the party.

Are you sharing other content?

Creating good content on your own site is only the first step in becoming part of your community and building awareness for your brand. The second step requires realizing that it’s not all about you and doing your part to lift up the people around you. You do this by sharing other people’s content and promoting their brand. For example, I act as the community manager at BizSugar, a social network focused around connecting small business owners and promoting their content. It’s a place where bloggers, entrepreneurs and others go to lift up other people, and the results of those interactions have been pretty fantastic. Engaging with others doesn’t always mean you go in talking about yourself. Sometimes it means talking about them. In fact, ideally, that’s what it means more often than not.

Some other ways to promote others?

  • Share links to your network on services like Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.
  • Recommend or submit great content to social networks like Sphinn (http://sphinn.com/) or BizSugar.
  • Bookmark their posts at places like StumbleUpon or Mixx .
  • Create new content that promotes theirs, perhaps in the form of a YouTube video or a follow-up blog post.

Again, the medium you choose to use isn’t what’s important. It’s that you’re taking time to connect with your community in a way that is welcomed and shows it’s not all about you.

…Are you sharing it on your own site?

All the social media gurus will tell you that a great way to build your personal brand is through guest posting on other people’s blogs to leverage their audience. But what about your own site? Do you accept guest posts, or is it all you, all the time? This blog and Liz Strauss is a great example of a place that does engagement really well. Liz engages with her community by opening her home to them when appropriate, and creating a new level of trust between herself, her audience, and her guest authors. It’s a relationship where everyone benefits, and it’s a powerful form of engagement.

Are you networking online?

Another important way to engage with your community is to go where the action is and talk to people. What are the popular blogs in your niche that house the industry’s most important conversations? Identify them and get involved. What industry-specific social networks does your audience gravitate to? If you find they’re members of Third Tribe , then you might want to become part of that community and establish yourself as a trusted resource. If they’re active in certain Twitter chats, then you may want to block off time to participate in those. You can’t do a good job engaging your audience if you never leave your front porch.

Are you creating a presence offline?

What? You didn’t think you just had to engage online, did you? Don’t forget to also reach out to customers in the real world. That means creating engagement touch points in-store, joining your local chamber of commerce, starting a local Meetup, and partnering with local vendors. This is a great way to strengthen relationships you’ve made online, and to really get to know them as people.

The evolution of social media into marketing has changed the way brands must interact with customers. It’s no longer good enough to offer a great product; now you must offer a great brand experience as well. And that experience starts with that first introduction, when a company extends its hand to engage with a larger community. It’s when they stop being a stranger, and begin on the path to becoming a friend.

—–
Shawn Hessinger is Blogger & Chief Moderator at BizSugar
bizsugar You can find her on Twitter as @bizsugar

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

I’m a proud affiliate of

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Listening & Watching – Lessons Learned

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I took two days off Twitter recently and listened. By listening I mean watched. I’d been noticing the changes: the shifting, the influx and the exodus. I’m not talking about how the interface is working; I’m talking about the how the users are changing through the use of the tool. I’m a sociologist at heart. I like to watch group behavior; I like to think about what makes people tick. Brian Solis described social media as “… a fusion between technology and sociology…” Naturally, I’m intrigued.

I saw really interesting happenings. There will always be leaders and there will always be followers – no Twitter pun intended. I saw people I have met in person taking on leadership roles on twitter that they never would dream of doing off line. I saw people changing their behavior from when they began on Twitter to emulate some who they must perceive as successful. I saw people building relationships based on conversation and many offerings of help.

At first, I admit, I did notice the more negative aspects of what is happening out there like the huge collecting of followers based purely on numbers without any engagement. I also noticed that some people needed instruction on how to be genuine. No, not just newspapers and corporations but actual individuals.

Through a conversation I was having with someone I greatly admire (and whom I met through Twitter) I began to describe how I found this particularly sad. He replied the “genuinely-challenged” haven’t learned that their vulnerability can be a rich source for power to do good for others.” I thought about that statement for a full day.

I see a lot of good things happening through social media. I’m not just talking about Twitter – that’s a tool and there are many tools. I see people coming together, exchanging ideas, learning and growing. I see companies communicating with people who buy their products in a meaningful way. I see publishers, PR people recognizing the need for change and working through that. In tough times I see people reaching out to each other building a community that offline, maybe crumbling around them.
It was really good to step back for a day or two. I highly recommend it. It’s also really good to be back.
Have you taken a social media break? Was it helpful? What did you learn?

from: Kathryn Jennex aka @northernchick

Enlist, Engage, Empower

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What is your answer to your Community's call?What do you do with those that you attract to your community? The short answer is “Talk to them!”

The long answer is that you treat all of them with respect and dignity, find out what it is that they are looking for, and help them to find it.

Once you begin to build a community, you will find that there are some that are more interested in getting involved than others. One of the things that this kind of community member is looking for is Engagement. These readers and “doers” will enlist in your community expressly to get involved with other people – to talk, to listen, to help. They are looking to be a part of something larger than themselves.

Your goal should be to empower them to do so

How does your blog or website deliver to this type of reader/community member? Is there a comments feature that allows people to post their own opinion? How about a forum where the members can engage each other in a much broader fashion?

There are two schools of thought on allowing comments on a blog. One holds that it allows the readers to engage the author, and each other, in a discussion – a conversation – about the topic of the post. This can be a very powerful method of getting the word out about your site, as more people talk about and comment. The downside of this is the possibility of spam – fake comments from pr0n sites – and that you need to monitor the comments for inappropriate behavior. This is the primary rationale for the second school of thought on comments – don’t allow them.

How should you manage your empowered community?

Creating and nurturing a community takes time and effort. It means that not only do you need to give of yourself to create the content that the community is looking for, you need to share part of your creation with the community. A Web forum is an excellent tool for sharing this content and the responsibility for managing it. Sometimes called a bulletin board or message board, a Web forum is an online center for ongoing, in-depth discussions of specific topics and issues.

One of the more interesting features of the Web forum membership is that users frequently self-select for monitoring what is going on. As the “leader” of the community you can enlist these active volunteers to become moderators for the various topics and keep an eye on the postings and comments.

Seek these people out, encourage them to take the next step. Share of yourself and see what happens!