Knowing that Google and other search engines crawl your social media content provides a great opportunity to use social media to improve your search engine ranking.  Credible, relevant content will have the greatest impact.  However, the more likes, retweets and shares your posts receive the more Google and Bing, etc. take notice.

But great content will not necessarily make a post go viral.  While there is no way to predict what posts will go viral and which ones won’t, there are a few things you can do to improve your chances.

Pictures are still worth a thousand shares.  People like to see pictures of people doing interesting things.  Pictures entice us to click on a post to see what it’s about. A great image will likely be shared and often.  Think of Ellen DeGeneres’ famous selfie taken at the Oscars.

Speak to your audience directly.  Use their language.  Ask questions.  Use captivating headlines along with images.  Think of the front page of a newspaper.  “SEO Update” or “Denver firm turn SEO on its head” – which would you click on to learn more?  Test your posts and those of your competition to find out what your audience responds to and then do more of that.

Capitalize on the emotions of the day or create your own.  Think of the P&G “Thanks Mom” campaign from the Olympics.  It’s not always easy to find the emotional aspect of a business such as say a software development firm, but what about your people.  Maybe someone just overcame a major obstacle to succeed.  Can you use that?

And, don’t be afraid to ask for it.  Just like you need to ask for the sale, you need to ask for people to share your posts.  Digital Insights reports that 25% of retweets on Twitter were the result of a please RT in the post.