By Tee Morris
Online Career Tips Staff
Over the past two weeks, you might have noticed some recent activity on Facebook. Here at American Public University System (APUS) we’re tapping into viral visuals, photos that people will “Like” for one reason or another. We dipped our toes into working visually when we posted an image for American Military University (AMU) of military vehicles seen at sunset with the caption “Have any of you worked in one of these vehicles? What was your favorite in the field?” The result was over 180 Likes, and 17 Shares. Recently, with a photo of myself in costume, we created a “That Awkward Moment…” photo, this time featuring APUS’ website. The end result? Over 75 Likes and (a mind-blowing) 219 Shares. We could not have been more thrilled.
Now you might be thinking “But you only got half the Likes between images.” This is something I argue often about Facebook: People are Liking what they see when really — to better promote a brand and raise awareness — people should be sharing what they like. While the self-proclaimed “social media experts” go on about the importance and ROI of a Like on Facebook on account of it being a trackable statistic, sharing on Facebook is a far more powerful way to spread your message. A Share with members of your Facebook network will take an entire item — link, title, associated images — and with a bit of personalization on your part, place it in news feeds and on profile walls. Additionally with the Share, it links back to the site from where the item originated.
So, putting it in perspective of the “That Awkward Moment” image, this image along with a link back to APU’s Facebook page was shared across 219 networks, all of which now had direct access to APU’s content. These are commonly referred to as “impressions” in social media, and these impressions are maximized through sharing.
Sharing an item is just as easy as Liking an item. Look at the options on a Facebook post, and you should see from left-to-right: Like, Comment, and finally Share.
- Click on the Share option.
- Add your own comment to the item, or leave it blank. The item will share with your name and the link from where the item is hosted.
- You can then track Shares from your page, and overall Shares from the original page.
Sharing taps into the full networking potential of Facebook; and with enough shares, it is very easy to see how quickly one story can go viral. This potential all starts with one share.
We still appreciate it when we get Likes as it is an informal way of knowing when a particular blog column or news item resonates with our community. Sharing, however, remains as the most effective means on Facebook to spread our brand and online presence. The more people sharing our status updates, our news postings, and our photos and videos, the more likely (pardon the pun) we are likely to reach new students and investors with repeated impressions. So the next time you are visiting us on Facebook and giving us a Like go one step further and Share that item (or items) from our page. It may surprise you just how far-reaching that simple gesture of sharing will go.
Besides, it’s the right thing to share. Feels good.
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