How to Successfully Screw Up Your Social Sharing Numbers
July 19, 2012
It takes a big person to admit making a social media publishing mistake.
However, I will share a way to successfully screw up your social media sharing numbers, if you’re so inclined to learn this skill.
START HERE
I decided to change my URL title structure to make it shorter and more SEO-effective. It was pretty long and included the domain name/date/category/number/ title.
SUCCESSFUL SCREW-UPS MADE EASY
WordPress offers an easy way to customize the URL in the Settings section under Permalinks. Below are the the common settings.
http://www.writingriffs.com/?p=123 |
|
http://www.writingriffs.com/2012/07/19/sample-post/ |
|
http://www.writingriffs.com/2012/07/sample-post/ |
|
http://www.writingriffs.com/archives/123 |
|
http://www.writingriffs.com/sample-post/ |
DO THIS NEXT
I decided to change mine to simply to the domain name and title of the post. Example – www.writingriffs.com/title
VOILA – YOU DID IT!
It worked beautifully. Simplied, shortened and made the URL structure more SEO-friendly.
LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
However, I did not take into account the social sharing numbers that had built up and were attached to each post. I use the Really Simple Share plugin app to make sharing as easy as possible. It keeps track of all the shares and displays the numbers. When I made the permalink structure change it reset all the social numbers to zero.
Zero.
For example, the article Open Your World, Walk Towards Wisdom- An Interview with Dr. Ken Blanchard had 157 shares on Twitter. It went to zero. As did all other articles.
Did that affect me?
Of course not.
I mean it only wiped out a couple years worth of data.
So, if you want to be succcessful at wiping out your social sharing numbers, just change your URL permalionk structure.
Instant success.
Guaranteed.
Steve Kayser is an experienced PR & Media Relations Director, radio host and an award-winning business writer. His unique (some say bizarre) approach to PR, Marketing and Media Relations has been documented in a marketing best practices case study by MarketingSherpa, profiled as a “Purple Cow,” by author Seth Godin, and featured in the best-selling books, The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott and "Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs" by Craig Stull, Phil Myers, and David Meerman Scott.
Steve has also been featured in the following publications: A Marketer’s Guide to e-Newsletter Publishing, Credibility Branding, Innovation Quarterly, B2B Marketing Trends, PRWEEK, Faces of E-Content, and The Ragan Report. Steve's writings have appeared in Corporate Finance Magazine, CEO Refresher, Entrepreneur Magazine, Business 2.0, and Fast Company Magazine – among many others.. Google+
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By not integrating social login (i.e. login through Facebook, Twitter, Google etc) on your website, that results in less user engagement leading to lower sharing numbers
By the way, good thing is there are third party services like LoginRadius available to integrate social login and other social tools to increase sharing 
oops… I would have been gutted…
I gutted muyself. Hahaha. Easy to do when you’re a lone-wolf boss.