If you are one of those people who think that simply adding social-sharing buttons makes your content shareworthy, you are in for a surprise.
There’s a lot more that goes into creating shareworthy content than that. You need to create content that your audience loves and wants to share with their friends.
In this post, we have created a seven-step guide for you to create content that gets shared. This is in no particular order and you can choose to follow all or a few of these to create shareworthy content.
So, let’s get started.
If you want your content to be shared more, write on current and trending topics. When it comes to content marketing, it pays to keep up with the trends. So, it is a good idea to formulate a content marketing strategy that incorporates current trends.
But, how can you do that?
Well, the first step is to conduct through content and keyword research to find out what is trending. You also need to keep your target audience in mind. Your target audience might not relate to every topic that is trending, so filter out the topics by niche.
Create a list of topics and keep updating this list on a regular basis, to ensure that your content is fresh and shareworthy.
Infographics are one of the most shareable types of content as they have a perfect mix of informational content and visuals. Moreover, you can share your infographic to multiple websites, without making any changes to it.
It is an engaging type of content that most people like to publish on their websites. So, if you create one well-researched, relevant, and useful infographic, you can share it on multiple websites.
Moreover, infographics are fun to read and easy for your audience to share. This makes infographics one of the most shareable types of content.
Adding visuals to any content makes it more engaging and shareworthy. But, if you make entirely visual content like a video, then it makes it much easier for your audience to share it.
Unlike still photos, videos can have a lot more information and can be used for a variety of purposes.
[bctt tweet="Videos have the dual benefit of being informative and engaging. " username="relevance"]
The best part is that you do not need to start a YouTube channel to leverage videos, but can do so right from your blog or website. Just publish a video, with a short description, and add social sharing buttons to encourage people to share it on social media.
USA Today, for example, has a whole section of video content on their website where they do exactly this. Here’s an example of a video from the website.
Image via USA Today
The social sharing button is added in the video itself, making it very easy for their audience to share this video.
One quality of shareable content is that it is easy to read. This means that readers can simply scan through the content and extract all important information.
Here are some tips to create easy-to-read content, that is shareworthy:
Try these tips and create easy-to-read, scannable content. The easier it is to read and understand a piece of content, the more shareable it becomes.
One notable and common characteristic of viral content is a catchy and attention-grabbing headline.
[bctt tweet="Compelling headlines immediately draw people’s attention and make them want to read more." username="relevance"]
And, the more people who read your content, the more it will be shared.
But, crafting the perfect headlines is not everyone’s cup of tea. You need to hire good writers with substantial copywriting experience for this.
If you have the required resources in-house, then that’s even better. You can follow these tips to create compelling headlines for your content:
Try these tips to create compelling headlines and get more people to read and share your content.
The best way to get people to read and share your content is to surprise them.
[bctt tweet="Share a piece of content that is contradictory to popular opinion or is a lesser-known fact. " username="relevance"]
People tend to share content that shocks or surprises them. In fact, content like this often tends to go viral. News and media websites often use this tactic to create sensational content and make it go viral. This does not mean that you need to create conspiracy theories, but use actual, lesser-known facts to surprise people.
Here’s an example from BBC Breaking News where they have shared a fact to gain the audience’s attention. This tweet was retweeted more than their other regular news tweets.
Image via Twitter
Adding to the point above, it not just surprise or shock that entices people and makes your content shareable, but any emotion. If your content can make people feel things—be it happiness, sadness, and any other emotion—they are more likely to share it.
The key is to write good-quality, relevant content that is targeted at your audience and evokes certain emotions in them. You can use third-party tools to create good-quality content, but you need a human touch to make it emotional.
You can use humor in your content to make your audience laugh and share that joy with their friends. You can also write or share a heartwarming story that people can relate to and want to share with others.
This is often reciprocated by them sharing your content with more people.
These are some of the best ways to create content that is worthy of being shared. However, you cannot simply rely on good content, you also need to promote it and make it easy to share.
The former can be achieved with the help of content marketing tools that can help you amplify the reach of your content.
For the latter, you can add social sharing buttons on your blog or website. If you have a WordPress website, you can use the “click to tweet” feature. Also, ensure that the sharing buttons are strategically placed and clearly visible.
