Content is king. We’ve all heard it before, but content really is a powerful tool that can be used to get your website to rank in the search engine result pages. Now it might seem easy and like there isn’t much work involved in writing a great piece of content and publishing it on your site. But if it really was that easy, then every SEO marketing agency would be doing it and it wouldn’t be a powerful SEO tactic anymore. Most people can write a compelling article or web page, the hard part is networking it and getting people to re-post and share it. Here are some tips for creating shareable content.
Spend Time Properly Researching Potential Content Topics
So how do you create a piece of content that has the potential to go viral? Well, like anything successful, it starts by doing your homework. Conduct research to see what content people are asking for. What questions are people asking online that you can answers? When choosing your content topic, make sure that it’s relevant to your business. Use Reddit and Quora as research tactics, these websites are great resources for finding out what questions people are asking about your industry.
Once you’ve got an idea of what you can write about, perform a competitor analysis to see who has already written about it and what you can do to write it better. Don’t forget to look at the comments and audience reactions, often the questions they’ve asked will help you to write a better and more informative piece.
Create Controversy In Your Content
Content that sparks conversation is more likely to be reposted and shared on other online platforms. If people have a strong opinion about your writing, then it’s highly likely they’ll want to discuss it. When writing to engage readers through controversy, be careful of how you write it, you don’t want to offend anyone and have your website go viral for the wrong reasons, make sure that what you write is aligned with your branding and doesn’t offend anyone. Instead, seek to start conversation by asking questions or by stating facts, make sure that your writing is unbiased so that it can’t come back to bite you.
Create Incentives For Sharing Your Content
It’s a fact, everyone loves free stuff. Offer an incentive to the people who republish your content. Whether it’s a free giveaway or the ability to try your product or service for no cost, be sure to pick an incentive that your target market and audience care about. There’s a few different ways you can advertise an incentive, depending on the content you’re want to be shared. I’m sure you’re familiar with the competition style giveaways on Instagram where freebies are offered in exchange for sharing and liking the profile. But if your content is more web-based, you can mention the incentive in the email you send to potential collaborators or by spreading the word in a Facebook post.
Really Get To Know Your Audience And Appeal To Their Values
Getting to know your audience is a smart business decision for a number of reasons. It’ll allow you to better understand their wants and needs and tailor your products and services to meet them. The same rule applies for your content. Once you know what your website audience truly cares about, you can write content that appeals to them and aligns with their values. After all, people are more likely to share content that they feel passionately about, so by writing for your audience’s values, you’re more likely to appeal to their emotions and have them want to share it with their friends, families and work colleagues.
Collaborate With Respected Content Creators
No one said anything about having to write the content yourself. Engaging a content creator can have many benefits, as you’ll not only get A+ content written for you, but if they’ve got an online following, then you’re likely to get access to that too. Content creators have already proven that they can create shareable content, after all, that’s how you would have found them. Often if the content you’ve had them write also aligns with their personal values and branding, they’ll share the piece on their social profiles, blog or website too. So not only do you get a well-written piece of content, but you’ll hopefully get access to their followers.
Capitalize On Trending Topics
Have you noticed any new online discussions recently that affect your business or appeal to the same audience as your business? This is the perfect opportunity to write a piece of shareable content. People are already talking about it, but perhaps there isn’t any factual or structured information on it yet – this is your window of opportunity to capitalize on the buzz of the trend. If you wanted to get more strategic about it, use Google Trends to see what new stories are trending at the moment and what topics people are talking about.
Want more tips and tricks for how you can create shareable content? Read this Hubspot article to see what 46 industry experts believe to be the key to creating shareable content.
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