Your most important online asset is your content.
It attracts clients to you and encourages prospects to take action.
But creating compelling content can feel elusive.
You might think that writing engaging content isn’t something the average business owner can generate.
You’d be wrong. It is doable and on a budget!
Whether you’re writing for your blog or social media sites, the ideas below will help you write innovative and compelling content that gets shared.
How to Create Content That Gets Shared
1. Be clear in your value and intent
Whether it’s web copy or offline marketing, talking about your business, the value it offers, and the intent behind it not only educates potential customers but also allows them to make quicker decisions.
In the book, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, author Gary Klein states that clearly communicating intent arms people with the information necessary to get “un-stuck” by moving potential decision-making obstacles out of their way.
2. Analyze your competitors
When writing content for your business, consider looking at what your competitors are writing about. By using www.Alexa.com, you can identify which companies receive the top traffic within your industry.
Visit each of their sites and analyze the top shared content. What worked, what didn’t, and how can you improve upon it?
3. Know your ideal reader
Understanding who your ideal reader is and what content they find valuable will make content creation a breeze.
Begin by creating a customer persona. Describe what your perfect reader looks like, what they do, and why they would need your product or service.
4. Put images to work for you
Images are an excellent way to attract readers to your content. Whether they are funny, dramatic or eye-catching, make sure they are consistent with your business or brand look and feel.
Tell your story through images by adding custom designs to your blog post. Then pin them to Pinterest, share them on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
5. Create attractive titles
The titles of your articles and posts can dictate whether people click through, read it, retweet it, or share.
Be creative and always keep the end-user in mind. Know what content connects with your potential clients and craft your title around that information.
6. Structure content properly
Whether you are posting to your blog or social media sites, proper structure is critical. Take a look at your last several posts — were they easy to read?
In your blog posts, consider using lists. Lists are scannable and easy for those moving quickly across the Internet to quickly scan your content.
With your social media posts, consider keeping them short, but exciting. Encourage conversation by asking a question or offering your thoughts around a particular topic.
7. Form meaningful connections to build уоur personal brand
As you begin to create content, remember that relationships are at the core of getting that information shared.
Building trust by forming healthy connections will draw people to you and your content.
8. Share success stories
Every business has a story. What’s yours? Share your story in a real and relatable way.
Stories connect readers and potential customers to your company. Allow them to know and remember yours.
9. Change it up
Simply posting links to your social sites will quickly bore your target market. Change it up and intersperse links with images, quotes, questions, feedback, and any additional content that adds value to the conversation.
Think of it this way: if you were having a conversation with someone face-to-face, you wouldn’t spend the entire time promoting you and your product or service.
You would listen, react, and respond as well. It’s no different when you’re online.
10. Plan to succeed
Make content creation a part of your daily marketing strategy.
Build out an editorial calendar with a list of topics, article ideas, and social media posts to keep your efforts focused and consistent.
11. Share newsworthy content
Stay up-to-date on the latest news within your industry and field. Share that content in a timely manner, offering context around it.
How did you feel when you read the post? What is your key takeaway and why should your audience care?
Context is every bit as important as content when it comes to sharing in social media.
12. Build an email list
Building an email list should be at the top of your social media and content strategy to-do list in 2014. Use a subscriber list to stay in front of your audience and promote your latest blog post, campaign or product.
Driving subscribers to your content not only encourages increased readership and traffic but boosts shares by staying top-of-mind.
Awesome advice for anyone looking to create content that they want shared. It’s never a good idea to design something with the purpose of going viral, as they will almost always fail. Rather, if you create authoritative and genuine content, it will definitely get the organic shares you are looking for. Thanks for sharing your advice!
Couldn’t agree more Brian. It’s the whole idea of giving without expectation of receiving anything in return.
This is a really useful precursor to what our mutual friend Mike Alton teaches once you’ve authored really good (aka) epic content. I won’t be a nuisance and drop in the link to Mike’s Ultimate Guide but combining your piece to Mike’s piece is a darn near perfect combo!
Hi Rebekah, another stellar blog post again! I truly believe in #7. Relationships are the key to almost everything online in business. Not only in getting your blog shared, but in every thing we do online.
The relationship that has trust prompts people to buy, share, read, tell someone else, etc. Powerful stuff.
Always a pleasure!
Hi Rebekah,
Obviously bloggers need to provide a content which can be shared by readers. It is always the main priority for bloggers to work on their content. It is highly recommended that quality content is the key to attract many readers.
All the ways you have explained are really helpful. I hope I will implement these points for my blog too.
~Ravi
Hi Ravi! It all takes time and creating quality content is only a part of the equation. Have fun with it and enjoy!
Certainly some good points Rebekah,
I personally feel if you write content which emotionally build relation with your audience is going to get huge exposure. There is no doubt that your title plays a crucial role to force audience to read your article.
Hi Rebekah,
Great list. I will have to start looking at Alexa more; great idea. Most of the time my posts will develop from something I am working on that week or from question people ask and sometimes even from comments when I visit and comment on blogs.
I think I sometimes have a little problem identifying my readers because I am interested in so many things. I really have to work at that to narrow thing down.
Have a great evening. Monna
Rebekah,
I already tasted your knowledge many times of how to get noticed.. but I must say.. thse 12 ways that you shared here are surpassing many of the others before… you make it so easy to do it and to follow.. even I can do that hahah 🙂
There is a lot of ,material that you com=vered.. so I must come back again to digest all of it.. and as usual I will visit it as I need it.. that is how I have been doing so far.. make some simple notes and then when I need something explained better come to your site. neat eh?
I have so much to learn.. and this is one way to shorten the time.. THANKS so much for sharing such great info on how to improve what we need to do when blogging.
_nickc
Design, Uniqueness, novelty and promoting
these what i think contribute largely in getting your blog popular.
Thanks
Great advice Rebekah and a couple of your points were especially good reminders for me – I know about Alexa but it’s been awhile since I’ve used it for anything other than checking on the ranking of my own site, so will definitely take advantage of your tip there. The other thing is knowing our audience. According to all the analytic data the audience for my writing is women 40 – 55, and according to trend reports 70% of followers of self help are women. But what is so interesting is more than a third of my subscribers are men and in fact they are by far the most vocal. They are more likely to leave a comment and far more likely to email me with questions. I think this may be because I’ve always written in a gender neutral voice, but my ‘guys’ are becoming enough of a force that I’m looking at creating some unique content for this audience. I love this business 😉
Alexa is a great measurement tool. Certainly not the only one out there, but a good way to measure your efforts and keep track of your competitors.
That’s really interesting and exciting about your analytics. That says a lot about your writing style.
I agree with Steve. #3 is far and away the most important dynamic one should invest time in getting right!
Not only should you know down to the color of their socks WHO your IDEAL CUSTOMER is, the more concise you can define their “issues” needs, wants, budget, emotional triggers, the more relevant and impactful your content will hit the mark. Many moons ago, early in my Sales Career I took the Xerox PSS training course. They taught us the NIMTC model. Need+Interest+Money+Time+Commitment and it still works today!
Rebekah,
Thanks for the great post (Yes, I shared it!)
#3 is key. All else flows from that. If you really know your reader, what they like, what their problems are, and how you can solve them, you can create content that resonates. If you do, chances are it gets shared. If not, you’re probably sunk, no matter how well you hit on the other 11 points.
Thanks,
Steve
As ever, great tips. I’d add that it’s important also to have a plan for promoting your content. Having great content is of no use unless people are aware of it and encouraged to engage and share. Promotion, I think, should take up as much time, if not more, than creating the content.
Use other social media sites such as LinkedIn to find out what your target audience is talking about – usually it is their pain points, then write content to answer their most pressing questions.