If you use social media a lot you’ll often find yourself sharing and retweeting not only your own posts, tweets and articles, but also other people’s. Sharing helps to spread the word – but there’s so much more mileage you can get with just a few extra words.

I have found this out by accident, really, by watching my visits / reads stats here on HTWB. Posts of my own that I share get significantly higher traffic if I write a short (in the case of Twitter, very short) piece to accompany the title and URL, than they do if I just share title and URL alone.

Again in the case of Twitter where realistically the limit is 120 characters max, often it’s better not to use the title, but instead write a “teaser” line that’s more personal and less direct than a title can be.

For example … my recent article Restaurant jargon: gastronomic terms demystified got a respectable number of visits from Twitter when I tweeted the title with the link. But when I tweeted You’ll never be able to read a menu and keep a straight face again the visits shot up by about 40 percent.

Sometimes there’s only room on Twitter  for you to insert a couple of words. But even that can spark extra interest in the tweet, among your followers. For example (my comments in caps)…

BBC News – Sweden: Wedding ring ‘found on carrot’ after 16 years // 24 CARROT GOLD?

Brains of rats connected allowing them to share information via internet // AH, SO WE HAVE THE RATNET NOW

Edinburgh Zoo Pandas Listen To Marvin Gaye’s Mood Music Before Hanky Panky // MARVIN GAYE? MEH

BBC News – ‘Oldest marathon man’ Fauja Singh runs last 10km race // WONDERFUL MAN!

How to make a money vision board! // GREAT IDEA TO INSPIRE YOUR BUSINESS

As you know, Pinterest is mainly about sharing images rather than getting people to link through and read something. I get much more traffic from Pinterest now that I write a short descriptive piece of the article concerned and make it clear what I want readers to do next, rather than just look at the picture. For example…

This is the pin I wrote for the restaurant jargon article …

Restaurant jargon: gastronomic terms demystified, part 1 … I love eating out – don’t you? But so often we can be disappointed by the realities emerging from the yummy-sounding jargon on the menus. Here is part one of my, er, interpretations of those terms. Please add your thoughts to these ….!

The cover of my new book How To Smile Through Cancer, with these words to describe it and make it clear that it’s a new book, not a picture:

How To Smile Through Cancer … Despite many cancers now becoming much more survivable, in itself it is not funny. What can be funny, though, are the often hilarious things that can happen when dealing with doctors, nurses, hospitals, chemo-baldness, prostheses, ultra-sound tests, examinations and loads more ancillary issues which invariably you trip over while going through your cancer journey. That’s what this new book is all about…

And another article which got a lot of traffic from Pinterest, OK, hands up! Who stole SOCIAL?

OK. Hands up! Who stole SOCIAL? …If you’re fond of writing, there’s nothing more irritating than a bunch of knobhead technofreaks coming along and snatching a perfectly respectable word to use for their own nefarious purposes … read on for some laughs with humorist and business writer Suzan St Maur from HowToWriteBetter.net

Do the same for your shares of other people’s articles, posts, tweets, etc. and help increase their traffic too

About an article in the Harvard Business Review, based on Don’t anesthetize your colleagues with bad writing…

This is an interesting follow-up of an article (not one of mine, sadly!) called “Don’t anesthetize your colleagues with bad writing” that appeared in the Harvard Business Review a while ago – there’s a link to the original article further down on this page FYI…

About an article written by a colleague whose opinions I respect very much, How to fix three common online marketing mistakes …

Good article by my friend and client Ann Handley from the US site MarketingProfs.com. Do you agree with what she says about social media?

About another article, Writing with personality for a business blog…

Really excellent blog post by a friend of my son’s, who has graduated from Uni and got a job in Social Media, God help him… 😉

About a case study of employees with disabilities, Best practice case studies, the National Trust

The National Trust run a course called Passport to Your Future, the aim of which is to encourage people from a diverse range of backgrounds to think about working in the Heritage sector. This is the story of one young man who benefited hugely from the scheme

And so-on. It’s not rocket science; it merely takes a little longer to add a sentence or two to explain why you like the post or article, and why others should like it. It’s almost a courtesy; and it shows that the share has been done by a live human, not a software robot. It really does increase traffic, too.

What are your experiences with shares and how much to write about them?

More ways to generate value (and traffic): (instant downloads)

“How To Write About Yourself”…how to make the most of yourself, whatever you need to write
“Business Writing Made Easy”…everything you need to know about writing for business in English
“The MAMBA Way to make your words sell“…how to think  your way to superbly successful sales writing

photo credit: kdonovan_gaddy via photopin cc