This is a guest post by Janet Aronica, Head of Marketing for Shareaholic. Shareaholic reaches 300 million people each month through their global network of 200,000 websites who use their social sharing, related content and content analytics tools.
With nearly 27% of traffic coming from social media referral sources and Pinterest now outpacing even Yahoo! organic traffic for the traffic it sends to websites, it’s clear that the shareability of your content matters. “It’s not a marathon….” can seem cliche, but it’s true. The occasional viral post aside, there are no quick fixes that will improve the number of Tweets your posts get on a consistent basis. That said,there are changes you can implement to how you approach your blog that will improve the overall content and reading experience on your blog and increase shares.
5 Tips to Making Your Content More Shareable
1. Use an Editorial Calendar
From what we’ve seen in our publisher network of more than 200,000 websites, the blogs that create content the most often generally get more traffic and shares. But throwing content on the blog every so often without a plan of attack is like driving around aimlessly without a map. Do you know why you’re publishing those pictures of the company picnic to your blog? Or are you just adding to the noise? Ask yourself: * What are my goals for this content? * Who am I trying to reach? * Who will write this? * How will I promote this content? * Who would want to share this blog post?
Your editorial calendar can answer these questions. An extra bonus: this planning process is very motivating. The pressure to get a new post up each day can be daunting, and sometimes procrastination and writers’ block win the battle. Planning ahead a week or month’s worth of blog post ideas gets you really excited about writing them. Get hungry for the content buffet!
2. Focus on Great Headlines
Your headline is your first impression, so you want to make your headline count so your content is as shareable as possible. Plus, Google considers your CTR on places like Google News as well as social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter as a signal of relevancy for your content. Writing a great headline will pay off two-fold, increasing your social shares and referral traffic plus improving your organic rankings in the long term.
3. Measure Your Progress
You can’t know where you’re going with content unless you get a grasp of what’s been working or not working so far. Using a content analytics tool like Shareaholic, you can see what your most popular content is. When you see what gets shared the most, you can get a sense of how you will want to replicate success.
4. Get the Right Tools on Your Blog
Social sharing buttons are becoming a standard on blogs nowadays – almost to the point of overkill. We see them all the time – the blog with rows and rows of social icons smattered everywhere around the content. Personally, as a reader, I know I feel confused when I see this and it kind of makes me not want to share the article at all. It makes me pause and think: “Where should I share this? Why? What is that social network?” Don’t overwhelm your readers with choices – be selective and only include the social media buttons that will enable sharing to the social networks that your audience actually uses. Again, look at your referral sources in your content analytics to identify which social networks those are.
Another tip: Remember that when it comes to your content, it may not be love at first sight for your readers. Your readers may need to read a few posts before you engage their interest enough to motivate a social share. With a related content tool, you can suggest your best performing content at the bottom of each post – engaging new visitors and delighting returning ones with recommendations for more of your great content.
5. Think First as A Content Consumer
What made KONY 2012 so viral? Did you share it? Why? Skillshare’s manifesto has more than 4,000 Facebook likes and nearly 300,000 views on Vimeo. The Next Web even covered it. The Holstee Manifesto has nearly 800,00 views. The Atlantic’s recent article Why Women Can’t Have it All has nearly 200,000 Facebook likes. We all know more than we think we know about what makes great content, and that’s because we share what is great to us each day. Think about why you share, and you’ll surely stumble upon the same motivations that your readers have.
What shareable content tips do you have for the class? Let us know in the comments!
I feel like quality content for a blog is being overshadowed by memes. Through facebook insight the blogs we been posting don’t drive nearly as much traffic or likes as an image of a dog giving the crazy eyes to a tennis ball. Videos that are longer than 3 minutes usually loses the interest of the viewer.
But back on the subject of content, I’ve found that best way to start a blog following is to capture keywords and drive organic traffic to the page. A catchy headline will only be seen by the people who are already interested and probably won’t get too many searches for it, as oppose to content that gives clear cut information that the user is looking for.
Some great tips here. It is difficult to rise above the memes and infographics as the other commenter points out. I think the secret is sticking to your niche and making sure your content rises to the top of your specialised area.
I will definitely check out your tip for social analytics something I think is currently underused.
Wow! More traffic than yahoo.
Hmmm… What’s yahoo?
Never mind, I figured it out. I just googled it.