When it comes to generating traffic to your blog, Search Engine Optimization is very crucial. And we give our best effort on SEO. But we often ignore the Social Media Optimization.

Social Media Sites can generate a massive amount of traffic if you can optimize it correctly. Unlike On-Page SEO, it’s very easy to optimize your blog posts for Social Media.

If you are not optimizing your blog posts for Social Media, I’d highly recommend you to do it. You will see some quick traffic boost.

Here I’ll be sharing 7 Best Social Media Optimization Tips for your blog posts.

Let’s get started.

1. Add Social Sharing Buttons

The very first thing you need to do is, add social sharing buttons to your blog posts. You can do it by using a social sharing plugin or from your theme options panel if it’s available.

Social Sharing Buttons can be placed in various ways like floating buttons on the left side, sticky buttons on the header, or just at the end of the post. I found that floating buttons worked better than others.

Another important thing is the number of social buttons you will be using. It’s not wise to add too many buttons. Three or four buttons are enough.

Here at RoadToBlogging, I use the built-in social sharing buttons of FocusBlog theme. If your theme doesn’t have a social sharing option, I’d recommend you to use the Social Warfare Plugin. It’s one of the best Social Sharing Plugins for WordPress.

2. Optimize Meta Title & Meta Description

Social Networking sites show the same meta title that you set for search engines. But the same thing might not work in both search engines and social media. That’s why we need to use a different meta title for social media.

For example, let’s see the meta titles of this post.

• Search Engine Meta Title: The 7 Best Tips To Optimize Your Blog Posts For Social Media
• Social Media Meta Title: Use These 7 Tips To Optimize Your Next Blog Post For Social Media

While Search Engine Meta Title should be focused on relevant keywords that people might be searching for, Social Media Meta Title should be written in a way that people find it compelling and attention-grabbing. Both of the cases, titles should be relevant to the content of the post.

Social Media Meta Title can be a bit longer than the Search Engine Title. Social Media sites like Facebook & Twitter show up to 70 – 90 characters depending on the content and device. But it’s better to keep your title within 70 characters.

Now let’s talk about the Meta Description.

The rule is the same. Meta Description for social media sites should be focused on enticing CTA rather than having the main keywords. And it shouldn’t contain more than 150 characters.

You can add Meta Title & Meta Description for Facebook & Twitter by using Yoast Plugin.

After installing Yoast SEO Plugin, you will see a Yoast SEO Box under the Post Editor. Click on Social Icon, and you will find the option for adding meta title and meta description for Facebook and Twitter.

However, you don’t have to add meta description all the time. But try to use a different meta title for social sites.

3. Use Attractive & Optimized Images

When you share your post on social media sites, the image is the first thing that people notice. So you need to make sure that it’s attention-grabbing.

You can download royalty free images from stock image sites and use those in your post. You can also customize images by using graphic tools like Canva or Stencil.

Another important thing is image size. If it’s not optimized for the particular social media, it won’t be showing properly. I prefer uploading the specific image for both Facebook and Twitter. If you don’t specify the image, it will display a random image from your blog post.

We can easily do it by Yoast SEO plugin. It lets you upload images for both Facebook and Twitter. And the recommended image size for Facebook is 1200*630 pixels and for Twitter is 1024*512 pixels.

If you are targeting Pinterest audience, then upload Pinnable images. The optimal size for the Pinterest image is 600*900 pixels. And make sure to add “Pin it” button to the image.

4. Use Social Content Locker

It’s a growth hacking technique to increase your social shares. The idea is to hide something valuable under social sharing buttons and ask the readers to share the post to see the content.

It works great. But you need to be careful while doing this. I’d recommend you to use the social locker only on long posts.

[sociallocker id=”19194″]

Here are few things you can offer.

• A pdf version of the blog post.
• A checklist related to the post.
• A screenshot that you don’t want to show publicly.
• A part of your blog post.
• Or something as a bonus.

Whatever you are offering, just be creative and make sure that it’s not annoying.

[/sociallocker]

There are several social content locker plugins out there. I use and recommend OnePress Social Locker. It has both free and premium version.

5. Add “Click To Tweet” Box or Link

Adding “Click to Tweet” box or link is the best and easiest way to get more tweets and drive more traffic to your blog.

The idea is to encourage readers to tweet a particular quote or text by adding an actionable “Click to Tweet” box or link in the blog post.

If you want to add “Click to Tweet” box on the blog post, you can do it by using Better Click To Tweet Plugin. I use Thrive Architect as most of my blog posts are built with Thrive Architect .

For adding “Click to Tweet” link, you can use ClickToTweet.com. It allows you to create clickable Tweet link.

6. Add Social Sharing Button Triggers

Triggers can increase your social sharing dramatically if you can do it wisely.

There are mainly two types of social sharing button triggers – Pop-up and Fly-in. These can be triggered on many occasions like

• When the visitor is about to leave the page.
• When the user reaches to the bottom of the post.
• After a specific duration of time.
• When a visitor leaves a comment.
• When the visitor purchases something.
• When a user is inactive for a long time.

The best plugin which can do these jobs correctly is Monarch .

7. Setup Automatic Reshare For Old Posts

If you have been blogging for a while, there is a chance that your blog has a lot of “evergreen” old posts. These posts can generate traffic to your blog if you reshare them on social media sites. But doing it manually is not easy.

What you need to do is set up automatic reshare for your old evergreen posts. You can do it by using a WordPress plugin or a tool.

Revive Old Post is the ultimate plugin that can help you to automatically reshare your old posts on different social media sites. It has some other features too which will grow your social presence.

But if you don’t want to use a plugin for that, you can use a Social Media tool. I am using MissingLettr. It creates an automatic social media campaigns for blog posts for an entire year. All you need to do is, review the campaigns and approve them.

Once again, only reshare the evergreen contents.

Conclusion

All of the above things may feel overwhelming when you are doing it for the first time. But over the time, it will be easier for you to optimize your blog posts for Social Media.

Now I’d like to hear from you, do you have any other social media tips? Share with us via comment.

And if you liked this post, please share it on your favorite social media site.