What You’re Missing By Neglecting Social Schema
We put a lot of hard work into creating content that people will love and want to share. We spend time tweaking the copy, adding just the right images, and making sure what we create is as appealing as possible to our audiences in an attempt to not only give them what they want to see, but also in hopes they share it with others. But with all the work we put into our content, it seems one element is often missing. Far too many are neglecting social schema. Here’s why it’s hurting our success.
Goodbye Twitter Share Counter: Why It’s A Good Thing
Back in September, Twitter announced that they’d be redesigning the Tweet and follow buttons. As part of this change, the share counters has now gone away.
The change caused a lot of complaints from marketers and others. Twitter offered a better explanation for why they’re making the change, though many still believe it’s simply a move to get more money or just plain screw them.
It’s not a bad thing that Twitter share counters are went away. It’s actually good. Here’s why you shouldn’t be sad to see them go.
How To Use Schema For Social Sharing Success
How To Use Schema For Social Sharing Success
Schema is a must if you want the best from those sharing your content socially. Schema is how social sites like Facebook show great previews of the links you post. It lets you specify the headline, preview image, and description that appears. While most social sites will attempt to put together this information without it, using Schema means we can tell the site exactly how that preview should appear for best results.
While many sites have Schema setup to do its thing (the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress will automatically take care of adding the code to your webpages if you haven’t set it up already), are you sure your message is appearing how you want it to?
Event Promotion On Social Media Is Missing This
Most organizations promote their upcoming events with social media. They post messages on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and elsewhere that tell their followers when it is and why they should attend. They do a great job amplifying it on their own channels but they’re missing one big potential piece.
Does Anyone Use Social Sharing Buttons?
Social sharing is big. In Q4 of 2014, social drove over 30% of all traffic to sites. With social sharing driving so much website traffic, marketers do everything they can to encourage it and make it easier.
One of the ways we try to encourage users to share our content is by placing social sharing buttons on each page of our sites. The thought is that having easy to access buttons makes people more likely to share as it takes some of the additional steps out of the process. It’s also a top-of-mind thing where having them present may remind or encourage people to share our content. While social sharing buttons seem to be a no-brainer, there’s a big problem with them. Almost no one uses them.