In content marketing, even if your content may have no virality, it should be shareable at the very least. Shareability is critical particularly for startups and those companies that have a relatively small community, especially in the social realms. The goal is to make your contents as easily shareable as possible. But, how can you possibly do that when you are making it so easy for them to ignore your contents? How come, you might ask. Below are the reasons.
1) No one knows your content exists
What do you do after hitting the publish button? Leave it as it is? How can you expect your readers to share your contents when even you are not sharing them? Now, ask yourself. Will you share your own content? Can you honestly tell if your content is highly shareable? If you can’t even judge the shareability of your own content, no one will also do so.
It is one measure of the shareability of a content – when you actually want to share it with others and so others they can share it with their own networks. While there are various ways of discovering contents, the basic premise is that distribution starts with the content creators themselves. Make me aware of it. That’s the very first thing you must do.
IMPORTANT: DISTRIBUTE YOUR CONTENT
2) No one knows who you are
Let’s say that you’ve written a share-worthy content. The question now is – why will I share it when I don’t even have a clue who the writer behind such? Trust is a big word, and even more so today when even the media are tricked of believing a hoax as an actual news. No one wants to be a part of those-who-don’t-verify-the-veracity-of-a-content-before-sharing-it statistics.
With that said, before anyone shares your content, you must prove your trustworthiness and credibility first. Trust in you means trust in your content, too. Content sharing is also a form of recommendation. Thus, you must give your target audience some good reasons before they can recommend you. Publish information about yourself and make it easy for others to find.
IMPORTANT: CREATE AN AUTHOR BIO
3) There are no share buttons
A classic! How can your audience share the contents they’ve just read when there are no social widgets to support the task? Some sites or blogs put them buttons, but these are hidden somewhere that is not so visible. That’s another mistake on your part that kills the chance of your contents being shared online.
Did you know that if a person thinks that your content is so great it is a sin not to share it, he or she will copy and paste your link and share it with his or her friends? Make it easy for this person and other people to share your content by putting your share buttons where it must be placed, in the first place. Social widgets are no longer an add-on, these are now a must. And, make sure these are working otherwise, the person might lose interest in sharing the content.
IMPORTANT: MAKE THE SOCIAL ICONS NOTICEABLE
4) Your content is boring
When I say boring, it means not the actual content, but how it is structured. READ: Text without any picture. Admit it or not, but images give articles more substance. Of course, when putting an image, make sure that it is relevant to the contents because people will judge not just the text, but the image as well based on its relevance and shareability. Likewise, make sure that the image is in the right format because each social network has its respective image dimension requirements.
Have you heard of visual content marketing? Indeed, contents that are accompanied by relevant images get 94% more views than those contents that have no images whatsoever. Take it from Facebook. The social network giant updates feeds with giving links with pictures more reach than those links that don’t include any image. Images increase content visibility. Don’t forget that.
IMPORTANT: PUT THE RIGHT IMAGE
5) Your content lacks value
Long-form content is emphasized more than ever. This means reading a content entails at least 3 minutes of your readers’ time. What can you bring to the table that your readers can takeaway from your content in exchange for spending their time reading it? Put simply, is reading your article worth a readers’ time? If not, then that’s a major problem.
Sometimes, it is not about how short or long the content is. If your blog post is divided into ten parts and yet a reader can learn lots of things from each part, then there is no reason he or she won’t read the succeeding nine parts. It is better to publish a 500-word article that is packed with practical and actionable tidbits than read a 2,000-word post that is full of fluff.
IMPORTANT: BRING VALUE EVERY TIME
BONUS
Your contents are indifferent
Contents must show compassion, too. If it focuses too much on the brand, no one will share it. They should not be too salesy because I, for instance, would only think that you are after my business, and you don’t necessarily care for your audience. There is no goodwill enough to make me believe that you care for the greater good.
As such, your readers are human unless otherwise you are writing and publishing contents for optimization’s sake – traffic and ranking, that is. Even so, experts would always say to write for human, not bots. Us, humans, value relationships more than brands and if a brand can show genuine concern for its public, it is easier to build a community of content advocates. Connect with them at the individual level.
IMPORTANT: BE HUMANELY RELATABLE
Perhaps, the last one is the one of the most important content marketing tips that this article can share with you. Put your readers front and center, knowing what ticks them, what piques their interest and what causes they support are surefire ways of making the contents you publish as highly shareable as possible.