Shareable content engages your audience and moves them to share it amongst their network. Once upon a time this was limited to forwarding an email. Today, with social media at our fingertips, sharing content with hundreds – and often thousands - of people with one or two clicks is quick and easy.
Your marketing strategy should include the creation of actionable, likeable and engaging content that delivers a great experience to your audience.
What one person deems shareable content, may not appeal to another, however shareable content will generally be:
Shareable content delivers what the audience wants. Content with the highest engagement will therefore be contingent on the specific audience you are targeting.
Shareable content is usually carefully considered in its creation. Even the most amazing content piece is unlikely to be shared unless it is optimised for social media and created mindful of social-specific objectives.
Here are some questions to ask yourself as you begin to create shareable content, to help you hone your focus:
A great way to create content that will check all the right boxes is to learn what interests your target audience.
Spend some time researching what your audience is already sharing, what content they enjoy and what content they are already interacting with.
When you have discovered exactly what interests your audience and what they are searching for, you can create interesting and useful content tailored specifically to reach this target audience.
If your content provides a solution to a problem your audience faces, you have created shareable content. Whilst your audience may not be willing to share a blatant advertisement with their friends, they will certainly want to share a solution to a common problem with them.
When you create content that illustrates a concern your audience has, and then answers that concern with a solution, you have winning content to promote widely.
Humourous and/or entertaining content can increase your chances of having your content shared. After all, humourous content easily gets an audience reaction and has a greater chance of going viral.
If you can make educational content light, witty and funny you will be on your way to engaging your audience and garnering those likes and shares.
Shareworthy content will frequently use humour, excitement, fear, sadness or curiosity to hook the reader in, and will often play on their emotions. If you can find a way to connect to your audience on an emotional level, you will most likely guarantee yourself more shares!
Make it easy to share your content with easy-to-find, well-designed social sharing buttons. WordPress have a great plug-in for this exact purpose: the Sharebar. The Sharebar is a vertical bar that is fully customizable, containing links/buttons to all the top social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Reddit and Email.
Check that your website’s share buttons are easy to see no matter what device or platform your audience is viewing your content on.
It should go without saying, but if you want to drive traffic to your website, your content simply must be optimised for mobile viewing – after all, in 2018, 52.2 percent of all website traffic globally was generated through mobile phones. In Asia, visits to websites generated through mobile phones made up 65.1 percent of all website traffic, as noted in early 2017.
Bite-size (or snackable) content is likely to be shared more, such as lists and multimedia content, such as GIFs, videos and posts with attention-grabbing graphics. If you’re not up to creating multi-media content yourself, start with bite-size content and always include an image, (more about that below).
The medium you share your content to will also impact how much it is shared. Facebook users share images more than any other type of post and receive more attention. Images posted to Facebook receive 53 percent more likes, 84 percent more click-through and 104 percent more comments than a post without an image.
Different content is popular on different social platforms. Learn what works best for each platform, and create the right content for that medium.
Of course we’d all love to create a viral post every single time, but having realistic, achievable goals is an important way for you to be able to effectively measure your content’s success, so be pragmatic with your ambitions.
We all hope our content produces a massive increase in website visitors, results in a massive increase in our revenue and collects thousands of likes, shares and retweets along the way! Starting with realistic and achievable goals, however, will help you to accurately measure your content’s success.
Some examples of goals you may aim for within a set time period are:
As long as your goals are attainable, reasonable and possible (based on analytics data), having precisely defined goals allows you to track and measure exactly what is working for your audience.
Your headlines are often the first thing your audience will see, so they need to earn their click straight away.
Your headline is a critical part of the success of your content. If your headline cannot grab your potential audience’s attention, it is unlikely you will get your click, like or share.
Here are some tips on how to craft an attention-grabbing headline:
Social networking is, well, social! Your tone should be conversational, genuine and natural. When you create content remember to be yourself. Your readers will pick up on your authenticity, which will make it easier for them to relate to your message.
When it comes time to review your content, consider these five points:
Social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter allow their users to express who they are, and part of how they do that is through the content they choose to share.
People may not be lining up to fill their followers’ feeds with posts advertising your products and services, however they may do exactly that if your content informs them, uplifts them, helps them or adds value in some way.
If you want help with creating clever content, or if your website is struggling to convert your visitors, it’s never too late to seek out expert advice. With over 10 years experience, Pixel Fish are renowned for creating engaging websites that convert!
Take that next step and get in touch with Pixel Fish. We can arrange a time to sit down with you for a website planning session so that we can gain a clear idea of the look and feel you envisage for your website, and get you on the path to success!
Call us today on 02 9114 9813 or email info@pixelfish.com.au