Right now, you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place with your content creation. You spend a great deal of time crafting what you think are valuable articles, yet they can’t seem to gain any traction over social channels. As a result, your content consistently takes a back seat to articles with titles like “What Your Cat Can Teach You About Business.”
Why is it that some articles go on to achieve viral status while others fizzle out with just one or two likes, shares or tweets? The fact is that most marketers put so much time and effort into optimizing for SEO that they forget one critical aspect of the content creation process: making the article compelling. Below are some tips that you can use to make your content more sharable:
Add a human element to your topics: Research from CoSchedule shows that topics like food, home and lifestyle comprise about 85 percent of the world’s most viral content. People, in other words, like sharing content that contains a human touch. This can be easily accomplished by adding a small, personal touch to a headline or lead. For example, instead of writing an article with the title “10 Ways to Be a Better Leader,” you could try something like “You Could Be a Better Leader in 10 Easy Steps.”
Use list posts whenever possible: Crafting a list post is a great way to consolidate your information into an easily digestible blog post; for example, “Five Customer Relationship Strategies You Need to Be Using.” It also makes the article highly sharable. In fact, 12 percent of all articles with 100 or more shares are list posts, according to the aforementioned research.
Spend time marketing your content: Even if you create a masterpiece, posting it on a single channel alone will not guarantee success. You need to populate your content across various platforms. “You need to spend 50 percent of your time on the idea and 50 percent on how you spread it,” explains BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti. “Not 95 percent and then only a tiny portion on how to spread the idea.”
Play to your readers’ tastes: You could be writing award-winning content, but if it’s not identifying with the interests of your core readers, it won’t be spread very far. So, first identify your target audience, including what interests them most. For instance, look at what people are sharing, liking and commenting on over social media.
Make sure your content is valuable: Few people are apt to share content that lacks useful information; therefore, make sure that content is valuable and educational. Look for fresh, relevant statistics whenever possible or other actionable tips and tricks that can be used to add value to your article and make it worth reading.
It’s fine to create silly posts from time to time—like the cat example above—but if you do so, make sure the articles contain substance and are not 500 words of fluff. To learn more about how to create content that sticks, check out our catalog of downloadable resources by clicking here.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
