This process is comparable to opt-in pages where readers need to enter their email for a freebie. The benefit is the fact that lots of individuals may share your articles than to enter their primary email. Locking content may also enable you to generate plenty of viral traffic to your website from the social sites. Every one who would like to obtain your free offer needs to talk about your post with his facebook friends. All his fans will notice a link back to your articles and if anybody of them is going to grab your offer also is going to share your blog again. Depending on the value} of the hidden content this could go on for many levels and lead to a lot of very targeted free traffic. You may also produce a flood of social proof that will assist your site attain excellent google listings.
I'd like to show You 2 approches for setting up a content locker for wordpress driven blogs. I will first show You a 100% free method to do it, which will also work on other sites not developed with wordpress. You can use this technique on any site on which You can create a working link. No plugin is needed. You can set this up within a matter of minutes for free, so there is no reason to not use the power of locked content on your websites. Afterwards I will show YOu a more professional solution. The secondtechnique requires the installation of a WordPress plugin.
Social Content Locker Script Set Up
The first content locking script I want to introduce is SocLock. This might be the easiest way to lock articles. It can be implemented on almost any site since all You will have to do is to post a simple HTML link. Here's how to set up a SocLock. Just prepare Your blog post or site like You normally do. Then copy the URL of the new page. It can be found by you right underneath the post title in your wordpress post editor. Go to SocLock and enter your URL, a pre-defined tweet text and a title for your page. Your visitors will share this URL with the tile and explanation You enter here. Then You Definitely need to enter the URL where your secured content is placed. SocLock will return a URL. Duplicate it. Then go back to your wordpress post editor and insert the new link rather than a download link or any content you want to be secured. now offers the largest 3 social networks: Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus One.
With this solution the locked content must be on another URL than the original post. Users will click the SocLock link. This will take them to a site with social sharing buttons and your explanation. When they share they are forwarded to a site with the link to the locked content. The drawback of this technique is the fact that the sharing buttons are not on your site. The sharing is done on a page at SocLock. Especially for Google this might be a problem. The social networks and search-engines do not like it if social buttons are hosted on another site than the shared website. This is basically because this is frequently a signal of strategies which are attempting to control share count or spam social systems via trades or robots. Because You cannot show hidden text but instead show a link to a URL with the locked content SocLock is mostly helpful as a "share to download" gate. I also consider the SocLock pages to be not looking really professional. Anyway, SocLock is a wonderful way to get going with a content locker for wordpress. It's free to use and very easy to implement, even for newbies with absolutely no coding experience.
An Advanced Social Content Locker
A more advanced way to create locked content on wordpress based sites is the use of a plugin. This methods has some advantages compared to the SocLock approach. With a content locker plugin You can lock content right in your post without having to redirect the user. Good Plugins will also keep track of who already shared your site. If a user who has already shred the site returns to your blog he'll notice the fast content immediately. No need unlike and relike to review the locked link. With a Plug-In You can put up a content locker from inside the wordpress post editor.
All you need to accomplish is to down load the social content locker plugin for wordpress and unzip it to your plugin folder on your site. Generate Your post as normal. To lock content You only enter the information You need to be secured and inform the plugin where the locker should be displayed with the addition of a shortcode to your post. If a visitor shares your site he will not be forwarded. He will stick to your internet site and the plugin will then eliminate the social buttons and present the locked articles. A cookie is then created by the Plugin to the readers browser to track the shares. Returning users who already shared will notice the locked content. Only first time visitors will see the locker. You can see that the 2nd method has some advantages. SocLock is mostly useful for download links. But sometimes You might need to lock other articles. Some individuals even hide all their posts. User can only read a snippet and will be required to share whenever they need to read a full article. This can be implemented with SocLock too, but it will take some time. You also have to create 2 pages every time. One with the snippet and one with the full post. When You use an advanced social content locker plugin You can lock any conent You like. The fact that a plugin remembers your visitors also makes your blog look more professional. If You are only searching for a way to get some likes or shares for a freebie then using SocLock will do the job for You. If You are planning use social content lockers regularly and especially for other things than downloads then I recommend to use a plugin. It comes with features, looks more professiona and keeps your visitors on your own site at all times. The only downside of using a plugin is that most of them are not available for free. The free viral locker scripts which are available as a wordpress plugin generally have a big disadvantage : They only offer a single social network. This way You will loose out on all of the traffic from folks who are not on that network. That's why i'd use SocLock for a free way of locking content even though it's not an ideal solution. However the support for 3 social systems at the same time makes it the greatest free solution I am aware of. I think that paying the cost for a professional content locker for wordpress is well worth every dime You spend in the end for any serious webmaster. If You publish quality articles on your blog then the amount of social shares You will get will be worth significantly more than what You spend when You buy the plugin. You also save yourself lots of time during set up as You won't need to abandon your wordpress post editor. The largest plus of a social content locker plugin is that your readers will remain on your site during the whole sharing process, so offering your site a much more professional look than using the SocLock redirect pages. Because the sharing switches are hosted on your own site when using a plugin you are assured that social systems and search-engines are going to consider these shares to be from actual readers. That is vital so you can get the most social search engine optimization worth from the content locker. I wish my article gave You a solid idea of how viral content locks function and how You can utilize them to your advantage. Whichever of the two options You choose, You can raise social sharing of your articles with both of them. Therefore take advantage of it. Why not setup your first wordpress content locker instantly? Click this link to discover a content locker plugin that comes with the widest set of features I found.

