4 Mistakes That Cripple Your Blog Posts Social Media Sharing

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Ever wondered if you might be doing something that is hurting your social media sharing on your blog post? Are you unknowingly deterring people from sharing your content?

Everyone would love to get another share on social media with their content, right?

Well, here’s 4 ways you could be hurting how much social media sharing your WordPress blog posts get. Plus awesome tips to help you fix them.

4 mistakes that cripple your blog posts social media sharing

1 | Not Using Social Media Sharing Buttons On Your Blog Posts At All

This might seem obvious. But you’d be surprised how many people still don’t have social media sharing buttons on their blog posts.

I was looking at several blog posts that could provide value to WordPress bloggers. So that I could share them on my twitter account. And at least a couple of posts did not have any social media sharing buttons at all.

As a result, their content did not get any shares from me. Not because I was deliberately trying to be mean. But because I have limited time when content curating and there was no visible way to share the content.

How To Add WordPress Social Share Buttons To Your Blog Posts

If you do not have social sharing buttons on your WordPress blog. Then some easy social share buttons for WordPress can be added via a plugin.

To get free share buttons using a WordPress plugin, there are 2 I have personally used without any problems. Shareaholic and Social Warfare.

If you decide to use Shareaholic. Make sure you change this most important Shareaholic setting for Twitter before you make it live on your blog.

For more details on Social Warfare check out the list of best WordPress plugins for new blogs.

Also, full disclaimer – I have never had any problems with using Social Warfare on my blog for many, many months. But I do know that other people also have had problems with it. This may be down to theme compatibility. So, if you find Social Warfare a problem for your blog try using Shareaholic instead.

2 | Limiting Your WordPress Plugin Social Media Icons

Another way you could be missing out on social sharing, is by limiting the amount of social media sharing buttons too much. I am talking about having only 1 or 2 buttons!

Whilst limiting your buttons can help prompt sharing, by providing fewer options. Also known as the Paradox Choice. There is also a risk of the opposite happening. A visitor might decide to share your blog post. Only to change their mind when they notice your social share buttons are missing the network they wanted to share on.

As someone who regularly browses blog posts, to curate content for my social media followers. I am looking for social media sharing buttons for the networks I use as a visitor. If a post does not have any options that I want to use, then I skip sharing the post. Which means they just missed out on a share.

Are you making these mistakes on your blog that kill your social media sharing?

Use Carefully Selected Social Sharing Buttons

So, if too many social media sharing buttons can be bad. And too few can also result in lost shares. How can you find a compromise?

The best way to deal with this, is to decide which networks are most important to you. And experiment!

Ask yourself this, which Social Media Networks are most important to you? Which have the most potential to send you traffic?

In my experience, when bloggers talk about traffic. They will talk about Google, Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter being their main source of visitors.

I have heard on a rare occasion Instagram can drive traffic too. But I’ve found it often isn’t included in the free share buttons you get. So, it’s best prioritize Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter to begin with.

Social warfare screen for setting your social media sharing buttons

Another option is to simply keep the excess of social sharing buttons within a More Options button. This is available if you decide to use the Shareaholic social media sharing plugin. Which has a surplus of social network buttons to choose from, even with their free WordPress plugin.

Shareaholic's social media sharing buttons example with extra button for more social sharing options

Sadly the free version of Social Warfare does not have this. And it is, in fact quite limited in the social sharing options you have. It only has 6 networks – Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Mix (formerly StumbleUpon), Google+ (closing down permanently after data breaches and low engagement) and lastly LinkedIn.

3 | Your Social Sharing Plugin Buttons are Hard To Find

Even if you have the right social media sharing buttons on your blog post. They still need to be in a highly visible place to subtly encourage users to share.

If your visitors have to hunt down or simply cannot find your social sharing buttons. Then this will reduce the chances of them sharing your content.

So make sure it is super obvious where they can find them! For this reason, keeping your social sharing buttons always visible has huge advantages. Plus it is easy to implement using the float options available both in Shareaholic and Social Warfare.

Between these 2 WordPress plugins. You can float buttons above, below, left or right of your posts. Choose an option that suits your WordPress theme layout. And stick to only having one set of social sharing buttons floating at a time.

4 | Not Having Your Blog Post Optimized For Each Social Network In The WordPress Plugin

Lastly, the final part about improving the social media sharing of your blog post. You need to optimize each post for social sharing on each network. Different networks have different image sizes. Character limits for descriptions, hashtags and more.

So, let’s break it down into the 3 main social media networks that I mentioned earlier. Which are the most common for driving traffic to successful blogs.

How To Optimize Your Post For Pinterest Social Media Sharing

Pinterest is a popular source of traffic for many bloggers. But like many social media networks, there is a right way and a wrong way to share content there.

Pinterest favours vertical images. The recommended size of images shared on Pinterest is 600px wide by 900px tall. Or you can use other sizes that maintain a 2:3 ratio.

You’ll also need to write a few sentences about your blog post using Pinterest keywords. You can then use this for writing a Pinterest description that you can embed directly into your WordPress posts. Using Pinterest’s data-pin HTML attributes.

If you know how to copy and paste a bit of HTML into your posts then you’ll find this method to be simple and straightforward.

In fact, I find this method the best because you don’t have to rely on your social media sharing WordPress plugin. Which might be lacking in options or expect you to pay for the premium version just to get them.

And you should make sure not to forget about Pinterest hashtags! These are massively important for your new content to get found with.

4 ways you could be getting less social media sharing on your blog

Social Sharing Your Posts On Facebook

Unlike Pinterest, Facebook images are wider. The current recommended size for social sharing an image on Facebook is 1200px wide by 630px tall.

Regular organic Facebook posts don’t need to worry about keeping the amount of text to less than 20% of the whole image. This does apply to Facebook Ads though. So keep this in mind!

Optimizing Your WordPress Post For Social Media Sharing On Twitter

The recommended image size for social sharing on Twitter is 1024px wide by 512px tall. Which makes it slightly smaller than the Facebook image.

It is also important to know that your tweet text needs to be short and concise as the character limit for a tweet is 280 characters.

Hashtags are also popular on Twitter and adding a couple to your text will boost its reach. I personally like to find hashtags using either Hashtagify or RiteTag.

Make sure you update your social media sharing WordPress plugin with your username. So it can add the ‘via @username’ to end of the tweet so people can trace it back to your profile. This is the most important setting you need to set in Shareaholic.

How To Make Easy Social Share Buttons For WordPress Using Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a well-known WordPress plugin for helping you optimize your blogs search engine optimization (SEO).

But did you know? It can help you set up some of your social sharing buttons. To share your content in the way you want.

What do I mean by this? Well, once you have Yoast SEO installed and set up on your WordPress blog. You can go to the dashboard > SEO > Social.

On the first tab for Accounts, you should fill in as many social networks as you have set up.

Social media sharing settings for Yoast SEO in the social menu

Under the tab for Facebook, you want to ensure the option Add Open Graph meta data is Enabled.

Yoast SEO Social media sharing setting to enable meta data for Facebook

Next, if you go to the Twitter tab ensure the Add Twitter card meta data is also Enabled.

Yoast SEO Social media sharing setting for Twitter card meta data

These options will help Facebook and Twitter get post specific information when it is shared.

Now, at the bottom of each post in either the Classic editor or Gutenberg editor. There should be a box for Yoast SEO. If you click on the Social icon that looks like this:

Yoast SEO Social media sharing setting at the bottom of WordPress post to set more social options

Then you’ll see a tab for Facebook and Twitter.

Yoast SEO Social media sharing setting for facebook title, description and image

On each of these tabs, you can set the exact title, description and image you want to use when someone shares your blog post to that social network!

Yoast SEO Social media sharing setting for twitter title, description and image

This gives you a handy way to control what your blog post social shares look like. Without worrying about your social media sharing WordPress plugin. Or having to pay for any premium features.

How Can I Increase My Social Shares?

In this post, we’ve gone over the 4 mistakes that can hurt your blog posts social media sharing. Such as:

  • Not adding social media sharing buttons to your blog posts, at all
  • Having too many or too few sharing options
  • Making your social media sharing buttons hard to find
  • Not optimizing your blog posts for sharing on different social networks

You’ve also seen how you can fix these mistakes. Plus extra bonus blogging tips to help make your content even more shareable.

By fixing these mistakes using the suggestions provided. You’ll improve your chances of success at getting more social shares. Which means more eyeballs on your content!

So what are you waiting for? Start fixing any of these mistakes on your own blog. And start improving the chances of getting shared!

If you found this blog post useful then please consider taking a few seconds to share it to your favourite social media platform!

Want more social media sharing on your blog post? Then fix these mistakes!

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