Are Your Blog Posts Optimized for Twitter Shares? 5 Vital Points to Check

Posted: 16 Nov 2015 04:47 AM PST

Just look at these numbers: every second, on average, around 6,000 tweets appear on Twitter. This makes about 360,000 tweets per minute and 500 million tweets per day. That's nothing but official Twitter stats.

Impressive, right? What's even more impressive is that these numbers just don't stop growing. For every blogger Twitter is a perfect tool to spread content and get traffic from social media.

But are you sure your blog posts are duly optimized to be shared on Twitter by your readers? From tons of tips and advice in the Internet and my personal experience I have subtracted 5 vital points you have to check to make sure that your blog posts are ready to conquer Twitter audience.

Here goes!

1. Are Your Headlines Twitter Friendly?

Your blog post headline is not just "one of the most important parts", it is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of your content in regard to social media shares. Headline and only headline defines whether people will click-through to check out your post or just ignore it like they do with thousands of other.

On average, 8 out of 10 people will read your headline, but only 2 out of 10 will go ahread and read your content. That is why it is vitally important to catch your potential readers on the hook of your headline.

Now, think about your headline performance on Twitter.

Your headline must compete with hundreds of other content shares, conversations, and quotes. Your headline, in this horde of other tweets, is the first and sometimes the only impression you can make on your potential reader.

Considering the Twitter character limit, you should make your headlines as long as practically necessary (but, please, not as short as possible). Remember that tweets, containing URLs are limited to 117 characters, no matter how long your URL is. Plus it is always nice to leave Twitter users some space to add their short comment to the tweet.

So the max character count for your headline can be easily calculated:

140(max tweet size) – 23(reserved for URL) – 20(to add a short comment) = 97 characters.

More than enough for a good headline.

2. Is Your Content “Predictably Popular”?

Before you start crafting your blog posts I commend you to run a short research to find topics and ideas, that tend to be popular on Twitter. Find out what topics and post ideas are already popular on Twitter and build on top of them.

The simplest way for this is to use Content Explorer tool by Ahrefs. Just put the relevant keywords or key phrases into the tool's search box, sort the list by the number of shares on Twitter, and explore the most popular content.

Now, knowing what people love to share on Twitter, you can come up with similar content and it will be predictably popular.

3. Have You Got Twitter Summary Cards Set Up?

Twitter gives you a perfect opportunity to display the summary of your blog tweets right in the tweet feed. And that's awesome! With Summary Cards you can give your potential readers a complete description of your article to entice them to click-through.

Your summary must be crafted thoroughly to engage Twitter audience to click-through. It must clearly describe the following:

what one can find in your post
what is the benefit of reading it and
why should it be read

And don't forget an engaging image as well.

There are different types of Twitter cards, and you can find a bunch of ways and tools to manage them, including manual coding. But a Summary Card is definitely a must.

The easiest way to add a Summary Card is to use one of the features of a Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. All you have to do is enter your Twitter handle and enable Twitter card meta data in the plugin's settings.

And that is it. Now Yoast plugin will take your meta descriptions and add it as summary cards with a features image to all your blog posts.

4. What Are the Ways to Tweet Your Blog Post?

A standard and the most obvious way to tweet your blog post is to click the Twitter share button, but this does not have to be the only way!

You can give your readers more ways to share your blog posts by including tweetable images and click-to tweet quotes in your content.

Shareable Images

Image Sharer for SumoMe is a perfect tool to make your images easily shareable on Twitter, Pinterest or Facebook. And every share will have a link back to your post, bringing you more traffic from social networks.

Tweetable Quotes

Another outstanding way to engage your readers to tweet your posts and then harvest traffic from Twitter is to use click-to-tweet quotes in your posts. Quotes alone are great for your content. They are prefect text-beakers, they can add authority to your content. They contribute a lot to your story-telling as well.

You can move a huge step forward and make your quotes tweetable. By "quote" I don't only mean repetition of someone else’s statement or thoughts. This may be your own sound bite, a sum up or just any test in your post, that can represent and promote your post on Twitter.

The concept is similar to tweetable images: every tweet, resulted from clicking one of your tweetable quotes, will link to your post. Embed a couple of smart, funny, useful, and intriguing tweetable quotes in your content to give your readers another way to share your posts on Twitter.

If your blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a cool plugin called TweetDis. With it you will be able to create awesome-looking quote boxes, allowing your readers to tweet your quotes at ease.

It can make your images tweetable as well.

5. Are Your Sharing Buttons in a Right Place?

When I started to write this post, I did not even think of including such an obvious point in my list. But recently I stumbled upon a great blog post. The content was truly awesome and I was willing to tweet it immediately.

However I had to spend like 7-8 seconds to find the share buttons! This may seem a very short timespan, but not for online content. I firmly believe hundreds of people weren't so patient.

Coschedule, in one of their blog posts, recommends placing social share buttons on top or on the left of your content body.

I believe that placing your share buttons on top is good when your blog is already extremely popular and a bunch of your readers usually share your posts even without reading them. So I'd say it is good to have your share buttons "floating" on the left side.

If you're using WordPress to power your sites, you can use a Digg Digg plugin. Although you can find quite a few other tools. You can also try Shareaholic plugin. It will add awesome-looking sharing buttons to your posts.

Over to You

If you check these 5 vital points every time you post a new article on your blog, you can be sure it's optimized for Twitter shares. Now all you have to do is give away really awesome content, that will be worth sharing. Piece of cake, right?

Maybe you disagree on any of these points or have something to add? The comments are all yours! And don't forget to share this post!

Nick is a copywriter as well as an experienced Content & Social Media marketer. After several years of working for different companies, he is finally on his own way to success. Let’s wish him luck!

You can always drop him a message on Twitter @NickChurick“

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

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