Why You SHOULD Share Other People's Content on Pinterest and Twitter

A couple of weeks ago, I urged you not to post links to other people's content on your own Facebook brand page. (Read the full post here.) 

This time, I'm going to urge you to post links to other people's content on your Pinterest and Twitter brand profiles. What gives? 

I'll start with the reasons I said not to post other people's content to your own Facebook brand page. 

1. Facebook is the ideal social media platform to drive traffic from  to a website. It drove 25 percent of ALL internet traffic last year. 

2. When you post to your Facebook brand page, most of your fans won’t see it. In fact, brand pages can reach as little as 2 or 3 percent of their number of fans each time they post. 

Neither of these two factors affect Pinterest or Twitter.

Pinterest does drive a lot of traffic. But it doesn't drive 25% of all internet traffic. In addition, when you share other people's content on Pinterest strategically, your audience is more likely to find your content as well. 

Ah, yes, sharing content strategically is the key. This method is also known as content curation.

In fact, though Pinterest and Twitter seem quite different, they share a major similarity: their features lend themselves to content curation in a way that Facebook's just don't. 

Pinterest offers boards to help users curate content; Twitter offers hashtags. But each platform offers you, the user, the chance to establish your authority and raise your profile within your industry by curating Pinterest boards or Twitter feeds full of useful information on a particular topic. 

Let me break it down by platform. 

Pinterest

Pinterest is as much a search engine as it is a social media platform.

Translation: Users search on Pinterest for the topics they're interested in. They don't just browse their newsfeed to see what friends have posted. Pinterest makes suggestions to those users based on the keywords they're searching for. That means, if you've created a board on a particular topic, and users are searching for that topic, it's likely you're board will make its way into their search results. 

If you create a themed board with pins to your site as well as pins to other similar products, and title the board with a keyword related to your business, you have a good chance of popping up in search results. You can read more about this method in the Brilliant Business Moms' post all about Pinterest, about 2/3 of the way down.

In this section, Beth Anne describes creating "the biggest and baddest Valentine's board around" in an attempt to reach her ideal customer, who she knew was probably on Pinterest but probably not searching for keywords directly related to her business. 

Here's Beth Anne: 

You might be wondering, “what’s the point of pinning all that Valentine’s stuff if your blog is about growing a business? Aren’t you wasting your time?” In a nutshell, the answer is, “No, we’re not wasting our time.” By creating the biggest and best boards on Pinterest, we get many new visits to our profile and clicks over to our site via Pinterest. 

Of our 4X increase in traffic via Pinterest, over 33% of that traffic came just from clicks via our profile.

The takeaway: curate Pinterest content that your audience is likely to be searching for, even if the content is not directly related to your blog or business.

If you can pin links to your own site, great. But if not, know that if you curate content around a topic that your ideal customer is searching for, you are likely to make connections. 

Beth Anne's strategy was especially savvy since Pinterest often favors sharing seasonal content in search, and users flock to Pinterest for seasonal ideas, like ideas for Valentine's Day. 

Twitter

You can approach Twitter in much the same way. The hashtag (#) allows you to curate on Twitter. The strategy is the same: think about what your ideal client cares about, and share information about that on Twitter. 

Use hashtag-tracking tools like Keyhole.co and Ritetag.com to determine which hashtags to add to your tweets.

Then share only the most interesting, engaging content within the topic you've chosen. 

The #1 Mistake Brand Pages Commit on Facebook (And a Quick Fix, for Once!)

EdgeRank: a concept worth knowing about. 

For every rule, there’s are many exceptions. 

But. 

You can’t break rules unless you first identify them. Michael Port just reminded me of this rule (ironic) in a recent podcast episode about public speaking. If you know the rules, then you can decide whether they apply in your case. If you don’t know the rules, you are just spitballin’. 

Here's a rule I'd like you to think about: 

Don’t post links to other people’s websites on your Facebook brand page. 

I understand the impulse: Facebook is for sharing cool stuff! Right? On my personal Facebook profile, I share articles and videos from all over the web. Why wouldn’t I share links to other sites on your brand page? 

Here’s why: Facebook is the ideal platform to drive traffic from social media to a website. In fact, as of the end of 2014, Facebook drives 25 percent of all internet traffic. 

But Facebook is not the ideal platform for being seen every one of your Facebook page fans. That’s because Facebook uses its own algorithm to determine what to show in the newsfeed. It’s a curation formula called “EdgeRank,” and it means that many times, even though you post something publicly, most of your fans won’t see it. In fact, brand pages can reach as little as 2 or 3 percent of their number of fans each time they post. 

So, if your post is lucky enough to reach one of your fans or one of their connections, make the most of this moment! Direct users to your site, not to someone else’s. 

Even if your website is not (yet) tricked out with a lead magnet or another way to capture e-mail addresses, you should still drive your users to the place where people can learn more about you if they click around. 

What do you do if you still really, really, REALLY want to share that interesting link, because it’s inspiring and super-relevant to your business? 

Quick Fix

I promised a quick fix. Another rule I'm breaking! I don't often offer quick fixes. But here's my exception. Collect three or four of these URLs in a Word doc (or in Notes or Evernote or an e-mail draft). When you’ve got at least three, write a blog post.

Do you see three interesting articles having to do with your industry every single week? You’ve got a weekly industry news roundup feature. 

Each week, write a two- or three-sentence summary of the article, with a link to the full article. Include a photo from one of the articles, a headline and boom: you have a weekly piece of original, branded content to share to your Facebook page that drives fans and potential customers to your site.