For Increased Social Media Sharing, Try These “Magic” Words

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 | Social Media

Give your content its best chance at success by working these terms into your updates whenever it makes sense to do so.

Thanks to QuickSprout for the awesome infographic. It goes without saying that you can easily overdo it. Gaming the system never works for long, so keep it real!

Facebook Words to Try for Comments Likes and Shares:

post
would
submit
when
warns
should
discount
inspires
where
should
take
tell us
comment*
amuses
deals

“Discount,” “deals”, “warns,” “inspires,” and “amuses” shouldn’t surprise us a bit. Studies show that many people like Facebook business pages for discounts and deals, and Facebook users do enjoy a good horror story, uplifting account, or funny cat video. The inclusion of “post” suggests that you should expressly mention it if you’re sharing one of your blog posts. Give that a try.

* Take care when using “comment.” Facebook recently changed its algorithm to discourage “like-baiting,” described as asking readers to like, comment, or share in an attempt to artificially inflate reach. Facebook elaborates, “This update will not impact Pages that are genuinely trying to encourage discussion among their fans, and focuses initially on Pages that frequently post explicitly asking for Likes, Comments and Shares.” Another magic word that encourages comments, but might be safer is “tell us.”

Magic Words for Twitter ReTweets

My favorite recently isn’t a word at all, but it bears sharing here! Tweets with images generate 150% more ReTweets! When you share your own content on Twitter, make sure to include an image. Once you have you image, try including one of the following words:

free
social media
help
follow
twitter
retweet
social
top
how to
great
please
new blog post
you
check out
media
post

Clearly, Twitter users are looking for great content in their stream. Don’t be shy about announcing your new blog post with those words! Letting people know YOU wrote that gives more weight to your share, especially with people who know you and your great content already.

Best Words for Google+ Success:

share
promote
increase
create
discover

Ah yes, the beauty of Google+. It really is about discovering. If you haven’t made G+ part of your strategy, start now!

LinkedIn Words for Success – Or Not

Not necessarily intended for use in updates, these lists refer to words you use in your profile to describe yourself or jobs you’ve held.

Use these:

created
increased
reduced
improved
developed
researched
accomplished
won
on time
under budget

Not these (they’re overused):

responsible
strategic
creative
effective
patient
expert
organizational
driven
innovative
analytical

When Running a Contest

When planning and promoting a contest, use these words:

winner
win
winning
events

Avoid these promotional-sounding words:

Contest
Promotion
Sweepstakes
Coupon

Note that legally you must define your contest or sweepstakes and all its details, so it may not be possible to completely avoid these words in planning and promotion. But when publicizing your contest, emphasize those fun, positive words instead.