How to Earn More Social Shares Through Outreach

Published on 06.06.2026 by Chizoba T

If you are serious about growing your brand’s online presence, you need a strong social media outreach program. When well executed, an outreach program will help get your content and brand in front of the right people through social shares. In this article, we look at how you can use outreach to grow your social shares.

Tips To Earn More Social Shares Through Outreach

To ensure your content gets a high number of social engagements, you need to put the campaigns and messages in front of the right people. Here are the key tips of a good outreach strategy that earns you social shares:

Choose the Right Platforms

You need to consider the platform where most social sharing is happening. A study indicates that the most sharing happens on Facebook across most niches, resulting in 340% more shares than on other top social media platforms. According to the study, the most shares in the food industry happened on Pinterest.

The high number of shares on Facebook doesn't mean the other social media platforms are completely useless; it depends on your industry. Here are a few more factors to consider:

  • For the business niche, a high-engagement thought leadership publication had 21% more social shares.
  • Highly engaging technology content received the most social shares on Twitter. On the other hand, the low-engagement brands in finance, tech, entertainment, and business received 20% to 34% more social shares.
  • Among published posts with both low and high engagement, Pinterest had the highest number of shares in the food, health, education, and lifestyle niches.

Therefore, consider the social media platform that is gaining traction among the prospects you are targeting, and pay attention to the kind of content that earns the most social shares.

Determine the Content Earning the Most Social Shares

In the same way you need to find the publishers whose content receives the highest engagement in your niche, you also need to find the one who shares the most to give your content a boost. Since social shares are a major source of traffic, you need to dedicate your sharing efforts to outreach and relationships with influencers.

You can do that by searching for the related brands, publishers, and hashtags. When you get a couple of candidates who actively promote content that is similar to yours, you need to evaluate if they are really appropriate for your campaign based on factors such as:

  • Page authority. Check the social authority of the influencer's page using tools such as PeerIndex and Followerwork.
  • Domain authority. As with publishers, you need to check the main influencer’s domain authority and the kind of content they create on their website.
  • Followers. The number of followers is also an important factor when considering the right influencers to work with.
  • Retweets to share ratio. You want to consider how often your target audience’s retweets are retweeted. This will provide insights into how far they can extend your content’s reach.
  • Reply ratio. Replies play an important role in driving engagement. When your target audience sees you as an authority in your niche, they might share your content.

Research for the Relevant Content

After deciding which publishers are the best choice for your goal, you need to find keywords that resonate with your target audience. This is important because certain keywords gain more traction than others. For instance, keywords with the term “giveaways” are among the most shared, with the most shares happening on Facebook, X, and Google+, rather than on Pinterest or LinkedIn.

When you conduct keyword research for the best-performing keywords, you can find ways to improve your campaigns. Two trends will benefit you:

  • Headlines. Adding knowledge-based or positive adjectives in your headlines can help increase your social shares. While you don't have to make your headlines sound awkward, you can add some subtle suggestions in your subject lines.
  • Data visualization and images get more social media shares.

Outreach Prospects with the Most Shares

You want to work with publishers who can work for your outreach program. Depending on your content's goal, you may need to consider a high-engagement publisher with more than 20k social shares or a low-engagement one with fewer than 20k. Remember that each of these options will come with its pros and cons as follows:

Pros of High Engagement Publishers

  • Can produce more social media shares due to its large audience.

Cons of High Engagement Publishers

  • Can be hard to get accepted as they get hundreds of pitches every day.

Pros of Low Engagement Publishers

  • While narrow, the site’s audiences are highly targeted, which can result in greater exposure than for your specific audience segments.

Cons of Low Engagement Publishers

  • These sites have smaller audiences, which translates into fewer overall shares. 

If you want to attract a broader market, big, high-traffic publishers can be a good choice. Since their content is designed to intrigue and excite during the awareness stage, you can generate more interest from the high-engagement publisher. 

There are several factors to consider when determining if a publisher is a good choice for you. These include:

  • Experience in covering previous topics. Check their previous articles to see the angles of the story and the depth to which they examine the campaign’s topic.
  • Social shares in their content. Quickly check their presence across different social media platforms to determine the audience's concentration. This can be key to a successful social media collaboration.
  • Recently earned social shares for keywords in your niche. If they are getting a lot of shares for keywords outside your target ones, they are not worth outreaching to.
  • Total number of shares for each content piece. Take time to consider the average share rate of the content, so you can set realistic benchmarks for what you are trying to achieve. 
  • Domain authority. The site’s domain authority indicates its potential performance in search results. When you target the high DA sites, you can earn some SEO benefits.

In Conclusion

The above outreach strategies can help you achieve your goal of increasing social shares for your content. Remember, the more social shares you get, the greater your content's reach.