Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Every time you write a new post, you share it on the social web, right? Well, how’s that working for you?

It’s unfortunate, but most Twitter and Facebook feeds look like a graveyard – no likes, comments, or shares. That’s because no one shows you how to use social media properly.

Today, I want to share with you the strategies that I have used to maximize the number of social shares I get from each post. Social media traffic can play a big role in growing a site as you might have seen in my 100k challenge.

Effective content doesn’t depend on SEO friendliness or quality of editing, say B2B marketers responding to an Optify survey [download page] released this month. Instead, it’s all about engaging and compelling storytelling. Asked the 3 most important elements of successful content, survey respondents resoundingly chose this element (81.5%), far ahead of others such as originality (52.6%) and custom content (49.2%).

This focus on storytelling may be why these marketers tend to see longer content formats and personal contact as more effective. Almost 8 in 10 consider case studies to be effective in engaging prospects and delivering message, with white papers (73%) and in-person events (72%) following. By contrast, formats such as advertorials (18%) and community threading (20%) are seen as effective by only a minority of respondents, presumably as they don’t allow for the same level of engagement....