Making Sharing Easy is Caring
We all know sharing is caring and we all know how social shares from lots of people — or a share from just the right person — can make a big impact online.
But, as authors, what we often don’t consider is that when we ask for shares, we can show we care by making it easy for people.
Our fans, friends and family want to help us — they really do. But often, they don’t know the best way to help and, even more often, they are just busy doing other things.
Our job when we’re launching our books and building our platforms is not only to create things worthy of sharing, but also to make the act of sharing super simple.
Enter Share Link Generator
Let’s say you just wrote a great blog post, or created a fabulous sign-up incentive. You want to get the word out about it. You could send an email to your list and simply provide a link and ask them to share it. Which means they’d have to copy the link, go to a social media account, log on, paste in the link and then think of something clever to say to post along with it. That’s a lot of steps. The more steps someone has to take to do you a favor, the less likely they are to follow through.
Thankfully, there are some great tools out there to help you make sharing easy. My current favorite is sharelinkgenerator.com. This site lets you compose share links that makes posting on social so, so easy.
Here’s how it works, using Twitter as an example.
- Compose a tweet in the Twitter box provided. Your tweet can contain a link to a blog post or a landing page on your website, or anywhere else for that matter. Better yet, if you set a featured image on the page you’re linking to, it will show a preview of that once the tweet is published. Here’s a screenshot example of what to enter:
2. Hit the “Create the Link!” button.
3. Copy the link provided in the “url only” box.
4. Use that link to send to the folks you’re asking to help share your content. For example you could say, “Hey, if you know any authors who might need a big list of sign up incentive ideas, I just wrote a blog post they’ll love. You can use this link to share the post on Twitter.
5. When they click the link, this is what pops up for them:
A pre-populated tweet, complete with your link! They can easily change what you wrote if they want, but you’ve made it really easy to share your stuff with just a few clicks.
6. And this is what it looks like once they hit the “Tweet” button:
Sooooo pretty. And a total cake walk!
Also, if you provide a video link, it will actually embed the video in the tweet. (I got so excited the first time I tried that!)
Share Link Generator also works with LinkedIn, Pinterest and Facebook, though not all those platforms will let you pre-populate the message. Some, like Facebook, will just share the link and make the user compose an original message. If that’s the case, you can (and should) still supply some suggested language in your email request that your fan can copy and paste.
When you make sharing easy, you show fans and influencers that you value their time as well as they help they’re giving you.
Remember, building your author platform is about cultivating relationships. Always do what you can do be helpful and considerate. Sharing is caring, and making sharing easy is caring, too.
Originally published at www.pagesandplatforms.com.
