Social Media is all about sharing. You need to create something worth sharing and you need to put it out there so people can find it. Who are the people that share it though? How do you make sure they share it?

As good as your content is sometimes people just don’t share it.  You have created something very worthwhile and its extremely shareable.  You even put a lot of work into getting it out on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit and all sorts of different places.  You watch with your various means of tracking and you know people read it.  Maybe even a few people were kind and commented how great it was, so you know they enjoyed it.  But still you didn’t get any retweets or shares or anyone passing the link along to their friends.  What went wrong?

Think back to the last time you found something you enjoyed and appreciated on the Internet? Did you share it?  If you did bravo! If not, why not?  If you want people to share your content but you don’t go to the effort of sharing theirs where does that leave us?  We are just a bunch of people working our arses off to make quality content but we are all to stingy to do the favor of sharing for each other.

Sharing doesn’t take a lot of time.  Most places have easy share buttons theses days.  Just sharing it in one place, like Facebook, is good enough.  It’s a few clicks.  Not only are you helping the creators of that content know they are appreciated and valued but you also might show them the value of a person sharing their content.  If enough people realize how important sharing is and decide to pay it forward then we will all benefit.

Next time you find something you enjoy and appreciate on the Internet, be a responsible Social Media citizen and share it!