Beginning four months ago, I saw a 400% increase in the number of tweets per blog post I write. How? And why should you care?
If you are a blogger, you should care because I am about to show you how to do the same thing I did.
If you are not a blogger, I am about to share a killer marketing tip with you.
If neither of these intrigues you, I promise punch and pie to one random person who leaves a comment on this post, so at the very least scan it, read the question, and let me know your thoughts. (Special note: Punch and/or pie only valid to Burmese residents named Tim)
Here’s how I increased tweets mentioning my posts by 400%
I put a “Click to Tweet” call under the hero image.
That’s all. You can see it on this post.
Why does this work?
Studies show that up to twice as many people read captions as body text. That’s true across print newspaper, print ads, blog copy…pretty much everything. So as I was writing a post one day it hit me…why am I wasting the most valuable real estate on my posts with absolutely nothing? I had nothing below my hero images.
Here’s a rule of thumb…never have a picture without a caption or call to action under the image. (Unless it’s last Friday’s post and you forget…and by “you” I mean “I”)
I only have two calls to action on most posts: Comment and Share. Those are the only two things I want you to do. So I put the share call (tweet it) right under the most prominent part of the post.
For as long as advertisers have been advertising and news writers have been writing news, people’s eyeballs have gravitated towards pictures. So, use that space wisely.
Two interesting finds
Here’s two interesting observations since I started doing this:
- I always provided the “Click to Tweet” link right after the quote. The link is not new, just the location. So the location is definitely the important part.
- The “Click to Tweet” call only accounts for about half of the increase. The coolest part is that general tweets of my posts immediately increased upon changing the location of my call to action. More people shared them through the regular share links. My theory is that by placing a call to action in a prominent place, people are more likely to share them in general, even if it’s not by using the links provided.
That’s it…a simple way to increase sharing by your tribe. Or visits to your store. Or whatever you want to increase.
How have you seen this technique used well?
That’s a great tip Matt.
I was so close for the punch and pie, I have a friend Tim from Colorado. Thank you Matt.
I have a friend Tim from Colorado too. Let’s gang up on Matt. I’ll bring the pie. Custard or fruit?
Y’all crack me up!
Crack you up? Eggs? Custard it is!
Great tip Matt! Thank you for sharing!
It’s pretty awesome watching you succeed with this blog. Keep fighting for it man! It’s very inspiring!
Thank you Bob!
I will have to try that tip out. Thanks Matt.
Thanks, Matt.
Going right over to my blog and trying it now.
Done, will report on it later :0)
Look forward to hearing how it goes!
Great tip. I will definitely be using this one.
Sweet Brent. Hope you’ll share how it goes.
I’ve been playing with things like this to increase conversions myself – particularly with building my email list. I’m going to try this on my post being published tomorrow morning – here goes nothing!
Nice Tom! Look forward to hearing how it goes.
Thanks for the great advice.
Awesome! Thanks Matt. This is one of those things where I almost feel silly for not thinking about this…but if I worried about that I would pretty much feel silly all day long. Great actionable tip.
…by the way does this one fall under life, love or leadership? OR is it just “learned the Hard way” 🙂
Every time I use the Click to Tweet feature, I see a huge increase of shares. This is a great reminder, I need to start using more.
Hey Matt! Great finding and great article!
I’ve heard it a lot of times that 80% of visitors will read the image captions, but I’ve never thought about giving them an option to tweet them 🙂
And I also love the concept of “pre-populated tweets” otherwise called “tweetable quotes”…
In fact, I love that concept so much, that I even created my own WordPress plugin that turns text in your article into tweetable quotes – http://www.tweetdis.com/
Oh.. and regarding getting more tweets… I’d love if you could check my research of that topic 🙂
It’s called “How To Write Tweets That Get a Lot of ReTweets” and here’s the link: http://bloggerjet.com/tweets-that-get-a-lot-of-retweets/