Successful online marketing now requires more than traditional SEO tactics and the mere practice of content marketing. The quality and social capital of content is taking center stage in marketing industry discourse. For individuals, companies, schools or non-profit organizations to achieve high-volume websites and booming operations, they must get on board with the critical aim of creating relevant, engaging, information-rich, high-impact and very shareable online content. Achieving high rates of social content curation-social sharing-is becoming increasingly more important to SEO and the ranking of search engine results pages (SERPS). Each time someone shares your content with their network of friends and industry contacts, it gets a stamp of approval-increasing its reach and magnifying your opportunities for higher rates of traffic and lead generation. While an increased focus on impactful, highly shareable content may initially seem like another arduous hurdle to business success, the need to create content, which readers find valuable enough to share, will ultimately improve the quality of online marketing and the internet as a whole.
According to Erin Griffith of PandoDaily, Twitter and Facebook are now the front pages for content, as content mostly comes to people via their social networks rather than them having to seek it out and view it on homepages. Jonah Peretti, CEO of Buzzfeed and Cofounder of The Huffington Post, stated: "What's exciting to me now is that there are these social platforms like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and StumbleUpon. That means you can create something for humans, not for robots, and still build something massive." The takeaway here is that you should create content with your audience in mind, instead of being more intent on gaming search engines with SEO trickery.
There are no shortcuts to writing highly shareable content. It takes vision, creativity and a keen understanding of your industry. However, it is important to note that consistently creating valuable, relevant and share-worthy content will inevitably improve your search rankings, since they are increasingly taking into account the social exposure and influence of content and the authors who create it. Creating really shareable content will get others to promote your content for you. While originality is an important goal of content creation, highly shared content does have some common characteristics.
Characteristics of Highly Shared Content
To create share-worthy content that gets ranked highly by search engines, use these characteristics as inspiration.
1. It covers real-time, relevant issues or news.
2. It includes captivating images.
3. Highly shared titles are actionable, concise, clear, descriptive, authoritative and intriguing.
4. It includes compelling and illustrative infographics.
5. Highly shared content has breadth and depth.
6. It shares fresh, original thinking.
7. It covers topics blowing up in the news a la newsjacking.
8. Highly shared content is not solely focused on pushing products or services.
9. It is free of spelling errors, typos and grammatical and editing flaws.
10. It is visually interesting and presented in an organized fashion.
11. It showcases industry-relevant thought leadership.
12. Highly shared content may come from a trusted and credible source.
Create content that begs to be read, bookmarked and shared, because it is high-quality, original, informative and timely. Strategic content marketing can improve your SEO, increase website traffic and promote higher lead generation. Without high-quality content creation, you will not be able to generate social capital with your content, and your website and business as a whole could suffer as a result. Do not get left in the dust. Attempt to create share-worthy content, and you could be recognized as an industry thought leader, increase your reach, generate and convert more leads, and achieve higher new business generation.