One of the greatest advantages of Accredible’s digital certificates and badges is the ease at which they can be shared onto social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. What could be better than harnessing your alumni, members or attendees to spread the good word about your offerings via social media? After all, their network of peers will often be a perfect target audience and what’s more, unlike most digital advertising, this is organic and, free!
I often get asked by clients “How do I get my credential recipients to share more?” so I thought I would take this back to basics and look at a few easy things you can do to really increase your credential engagement and social sharing.
Decide on your goals
First things first, we need to narrow down our goals a little. Simply saying “I want more shares” is too broad, too difficult to measure and likely to end in failure. So, let’s be specific and let’s try where possible to use a data informed approach.
If you’ve been using Accredible for some time, you can use the analytics section to help you understand where your audience are currently most engaged. Just click the “analytics” button in the top menu, adjust the dates so they cover your total issuance time with Accredible and study the results. This should give you a clear idea of where your recipients like to share their credentials most.
If you don’t have this data, it will either be a case of talking to your marketing to see if they already have an audience profile and understanding of your recipients online habits or A/B testing until you find the best channel for you.
Here’s some examples of potential goals:
- “I want more shares on Twitter.”
- “I want more people to open and view their credential “
- “I want more people to add their credential to their LinkedIn profile”
Link your social channels
This is a simple one but something clients often overlook. Head here and link your companies LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook channels. Once this is done, sharing options will appear across all of your credentials. Giving you recipients a quick way to shout about their new badge or certificate, while at the same time tagging your brand.
Customize your emails
The credential delivery email is your first touch point with your recipients and it should not only be used to provide them with their unique credential link, but also to push them to perform your chosen action. You can use the subject line, the email content and call-to-action buttons to really drive home your chosen goal.
Here’s a few ideas for tweaking your emails:
- Re-write your email subject lines to be trustworthy, succinct and action orientated. e.g “Share your [insert company name] on Twitter now.”
- Re-write the email content to be social sharing & benefit focused. Try adding a section entitled “3 benefits of sharing your [insert company name] credential across social media…”
- Add one-click call to action buttons into the email content that re-enforce your goal. “Share on Google+”, “Tweet now!” or “Share on Facebook.”
- Brand the email with your logo and colors to make it more trustworthy and engaging to your audience.
Want to learn more about customizing your emails? Use our guide located here.
Talk back
You can help encourge your recipients to share online by really engaging them when they do share. Make sure to respond to every recipient who @’s you on twitter or mentions or brand via their credential on Facebook. You could even consider starting a social campaign or specific hashtag for any of your recipients that do share their credential. #winning
These 4 steps can be completed in less than an hour but should have a huge impact on your engagement. Make sure to give each test you do enough time so that you get a big enough sample size to assess whether it has been successful. And if it doesn’t work, go back, rewrite your subject lines, try again with a different goal or update your content to see what gets your recipients sharing. Every industry and every company has a uniqueness to what makes their audience tick online. Through A/B testing and data led decision making you will eventually find your recipe for success.
If you’re not already signed up for Accredible, you can get started for free by creating an account here.
