This week’s topic flavor is about viral content. You must have already read a blog about a similar topic yesterday, we thought of sticking to the flavor profile of viral content and bring you more content related to sharable content. We charted a few points here in this blog to increase the shareability of your content.
These points that we are about to mention comes with a caution. To begin with, you need to have compelling content. Once you have it in place, there area few probable questions you need to address such as
- What types of emotions do the most popular articles invoke?
- What formats of posts typically receive a lot of shares?
- Do readers love to share short-form or long-form content?
- Does trust play a major role in whether someone will share an article?
- What’s the effect of having just one image in a post vs no images?
- What’s the best day of the week to publish an article?
Be warned, there is no replacement for quality content, no gimmicks, or tricks can bait the users into making the content go viral if there is no stuff in it. However, these tips that we are laying bare before you might increase the sharability of your content.
Related: Create Viral Content with AI
1. Long-Form content gets more social shares than short-form content
Longform content has a considerable edge over short-form content when it comes to sharability. An article or a blog that hovers between 3,000 – 10,000 word receives maximum shares than any content that’s below 500-word range. However, if you create great content with as much as fewer words possible, you could still win this game.
Users want to share intellectually challenging, long-form content. You should write that one epic piece of content that has less competition instead of writing lots of short, fluffy pieces. With this, you can easily stand out.
Key Ingredient:
Aim for at least 2,000 words per post
Related: 7 Ways to Make Your Content Go Viral
2. Have at least one image in your post for more Facebook shares
One of the biggest revelations that we came across is that on an overage, twice as many people share posts with at least one image in the post. Articles that implemented the Facebook preview image meta tag had more than three times as many Facebook shares and likes compared to those that didn’t.
Key Ingredient:
Incorporate those social meta tags and feature a photo to each post! The images determine what potential readers see before they even visit your article.
3. An image in your pots leads to more Twitter shares
Just as the point you read before for Facebook, it is the same for Twitter too. You can increase your social shares considerably by implementing an image in the post. We found that posts with the Open Graph image tag did substantially better on Twitter than those without
Key Ingredient:
Adding images to your content helps it get shared on Twitter as well as Facebook.
4. Invoke emotions. Appeal to people’s narcissistic side
Emotions work wonders. As per our analysis of shared content across the web, every post was filled with emotions such as joy, sadness, anger, amusement, laughter, etc. The three most popular emotions invoked were: Awe -25%, Laughter -17%, and Amusement -15%. Likewise, the least popular emotions were sadness and anger which was accounted for at 7%.
Sharing awe-inspiring and funny content brings valuable and entertaining content to each other. It also helps them grow and nourish relationships and also probably to show that they have great tastes. And then, people also share for selfish reasons.
Key Ingredient:
Be entertaining… Nobody wants to bore their friends.
5. Lists and infographics are highly rated
The content formats that people are likely to share can be classified into :
- Lists
- Infographics
- How-to articles
- “What” posts (e.g. articles whose title started with the word “What”)
- “Why” posts (e.g. articles that tried to answer a “Why” question)
- Videos
List posts and infographics receive more average shares than other content types. Surprisingly, how-to posts and videos receive fewer shares than the average post. In the same way as above, Infographics make it easier to digest a huge amount of information in a visually appealing way.
Either way, judiciously using your content with plenty of images or charts are wise, so readers aren’t intimidated by so much text.
Key ingredient:
If you’re writing long-form content, remember to keep it easier to scan, and not a wall of text. Structuring it as a list post is a simple way to do that, but if you’re not writing a list, make sure you write easy to read paragraphs and use sub-headlines and bullet points.
6. Trustworthy-looking content receives max shares
Trust plays an important role in content sharability. The articles, blogs, or content with bylines implies trust and plays a major role in being shared on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. When it comes to Facebook, trust doesn’t seem to make a difference.
On social mediums such as Twitter, Linkedin, and Google+, most of our followers are people we are associated with professionally. Since our ‘persona’ matters more on these platforms, most people prefer to share content from a trustworthy source to build our credibility.
Key Ingredient:
Have a byline at the beginning of every post, and a bio at the end to make your content look trustworthy.
7. Tuesday is the best day to publish content for social shares
The day of the week you publish your content can have a big effect on how much it is shared. Generally content gets the most shares on Tuesday or Monday, depending on the social network:
- Best Day Overall: Tuesday
- Best Day For Facebook: Tuesday
- Best Day for Twitter: Tuesday
- Best Day for Linkedin: Monday
- Best Day for Pinterest: Monday
Key Ingredient:
Publish and share your content on Monday or Tuesday to get more shares.
