Tips to Create Shareable Content in 2019

Social media likes are a type of currency. But shares are where it’s at for growing your reach. A share will organically generate more views to your post. If you get one share on a blog or social media post, it can domino into another, then another, and another, building brand awareness, expanding your reach and data footprint. All you have to do is create content worth sharing. How do you do that? Follow along.

Quality Over Quantity – But Pay Attention to Quantity.

The Internet is chock-full of tips on creating shareable content— however, you may find that much of the advice made widely available is so generalized and ambiguous it may not be helpful at all. Phrases that you may find are things like, “Posting good content guarantees shares and increased traffic!” That’s not false by any means, but what exactly is the proverbial “good content”?

Quality is a no-brainer. Audiences will share content that is relevant and of value to themselves and their social media network. Relevant content is built on audience research. Who is your audience? Who is your audience’s audience? Who do they follow? What do they already share? With the answers to these questions, you can start generating potentially shareable content.

By posting your content online, you’re just starting a conversation with your audience. The key now is to establish a back-and-forth rapport (you post, your audiences share; they post, you share). Ultimately, when done right, this can establish an ongoing relationship.

Titles- Not Just For Books

There’s a lot of content on the Internet. Millions of blog posts are published every day. Social media users and platforms are constantly increasing, and all of these writers and social media users are generating, liking, and sharing content, all the time. You need your content to stand out in the crowd. A good first step is to give them a title that really hooks your audience.

Start small. Use your general topic to come up with a few specific working titles, which are whittled-down, enough to guide the direction of your post.

Now make that working title, fun and unique. Test bold and strong language against more conservative and direct titles, and find the balance between the two. If you need to workshop your titles don’t be afraid to ask for second opinions. Having another opinion is valuable; don’t waste the chances you have to get one.

There are rules, guidelines, and tips galore on the web for you to find. Choose what works for you and your audience.

Note: People love to scan titles especially on Twitter, using an RSS reader or otherwise. Get them to take the next step and click-through with a title that is short, succinct, and interesting.

What Kind of Content Matters Too

Simple content is hands above more shareable. The way blogs and social media posts work is by making use of tidbits and clickbait. People generally respond very well to short form copy like lists and listicles. Your audience is busy, and the quickest way they can go through interesting and valuable content, the happier they will be.

SEO FTW

Although clarity and (sometimes) brevity is key to sharable content, making sure your SEO is well thought out can be a huge plus for reaching those that are maybe not already part of your consistent audience. Keep in mind that trying to over optimize your titles or posts can often sound awkward, and make your words sound like they were automatically generated for optimization by an SEO tool.

In order to effectively use keywords in your blog or social media titles and posts, research your potential customer base: What are they searching for? What problems do they face? How can you either help them directly or help inform them of other solutions? With the answers to these questions, you can choose and use relevant keywords, which will help you to become more searchable.

Note: Keyword rank isn’t the biggest barometer for success in search anymore. See this previous post to learn why.

A Picture Says A Thousand Words… (Infographics, Videos, and Other Visuals Can Too)

It takes more than a snappy title and intro for a post to be truly shareable. Images, infographics, videos, charts, tables, and block quotes can dress up and increase the influence of an otherwise text-forward post. Any visual you choose must, like everything else, be accurate and relevant. Use visuals to promote content that offers solutions to your audiences’ problems, in useful and creative ways, so that you can garner shares and valuable comments.

Tip: Don’t forget to read comments on your content. They’re an excellent measure of post success.

Why Google Keyword Rank No Longer Matters

Google keyword rankings used to be a standard for any SEO strategy. In many cases, your keyword rankings were a primary metric used to judge the performance of your site. Today, your Google keyword ranking is only part of why your traffic fluctuates.

Marketers used to have access to a lot more information on the keywords people were searching to reach content. Google Analytics provided this information with a sense of transparency, and you could get more or less what could be called accurate search volume estimates from Google’s Keyword Tool.

The first major update that changed this was Google’s move to encrypted search and the appearance of “not provided” in Google Analytics. These changes mean you can no longer see which keywords are bringing organic traffic to your site.

Then came the decision to move search volume estimates within the Keyword Planner to only show estimates in broad ranges. Instead of seeing that a keyword has been searched for 1,400 times in a month, you can see only that it’s been searched between 1k-10k times per month.

These changes have forced marketers to adapt their search strategy to focus more on a topic-centric content strategy, instead of on individual keywords.

One major criticism of keyword ranking data is that it is very inaccurate. Industry leaders and providers of rank tracking data software have even admitted that this is the case.

Reasons for the inaccuracies can be identified, and mostly fit into these broad categories:

Personalization, Location, and Device.

Personalization basically means that Google delivers search results that are personalized based on a user’s search history. This means that if you were to query “smartphones”  and were previously browsing the Samsung website, Google might tailor the search results to show Samsung at or near the top. This wouldn’t necessarily happen to someone that hasn’t previously gone to the Samsung website, which makes it difficult to determine which site actually ranks at the top.

Location and device take into account the major advancements in search that Google has made in the last few years, including the ability to take into account aspects of a search query that aren’t explicitly typed. Take, for example, a query like, “Minneapolis restaurants”.

A search for “Minneapolis restaurants” a few years ago would generate a list of websites that either talk about restaurants in Minneapolis or maybe include an actual restaurant. Today, a search for will provide Google with more information than ever before. Google sees which device you’re searching on and where you are during the search, even if you’re moving.

So, a search for “Minneapolis restaurants” at noon on a Tuesday would actually look like this to the search algorithms: “Which restaurants are currently open for lunch within walking distance of my current location in Minneapolis, MN?” This means that every search is completely personalized, without the user having to do anything differently, which further complicates matters for marketers.

Keywords with strong rankings don’t always mean to high organic traffic, let alone increases in revenue. Losing a lot of the visibility of search volume metrics makes difficult to estimate the traffic you can gain from one keyword. Factor in the evolving appearance of the search engine results page (SERPs) and this becomes an even more intense challenge.

To combat these changes and to try to get a handle on your metrics, you may want to consider changing how you analyze the performance of your content. Topic clusters are a way to do this that can give marketers clearer insights on the types of content that should be focused on, rather than individual keywords.

Despite everything stated above, keyword rankings aren’t totally dead. Keyword data can be useful for diagnosing SEO problems with your site, and also can give you insight into the intent behind certain types of searches. Mostly it is important to be aware of this information and to use it to your benefit. As a marketer, you need to be aware that the data around your keywords is not going to be 100% accurate. Which means that using keywords as your primary performance metric may not be providing you with the right information that you need for your site’s success.

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Marketing Trend: Demographic Segmentation

To effectively market your product or service, you need to create content that truly speaks to your defined target market.

However, your target market may be so diverse that your marketing doesn’t hit home to anybody in it. There’s one way to change that, and this technique is called “Demographic Segmentation”

Demographic segmentation groups your target market into specific groups of people based on attributes like location, age, education, occupation, and income bracket. By using information from demographic segmentation, you can create personalized marketing campaigns for each part of your target market.

These more personalized approaches can lead to a better distribution of resources and more conversions because the specific messages resonate more than a non-direct generic message to your whole audience might.

There are 5 main demographics most businesses segment their audience with. This is how to leverage each one. 

Age

Harkening back to Generational Profiling, segmenting by age allows you to change a campaign so it resonates with who you need it to. The thing about generational segmentation is that each age group, from Baby Boomers to Gen Z, have unique experiences and references that tie them together. Music, celebrities, movies and other pop culture references can help campaigns with the nostalgia factor for each generation.

Education

Segmenting by education lets you divide your target market by school, area of study, and degree. Successful campaigns that have done this generally play into the loyalty many have for their alma mater.

Occupation

Certain types of professionals have more value to certain marketing campaigns and occupations segmentation can separate your target market by job function, job title, and job seniority. This is particularly useful for B2B brands, as occupation segmentation makes it easy to target individuals with buying power at a company.

Location/Geography

Geographic location is an easy way to split your target market based on what they need and what they’re interested in. Landscape, distance from locations and climate can impact the messages you send. Advertising shorts or sandals in the middle of a Minnesota winter just doesn’t work for us here.

Income Bracket

Income segmentation divides your target market by income. Knowing how much discretionary income your base has, allows you to market to those that can afford your product or service, help you to set or your prices in accordance to how much is realistic to expect your target market to spend, and may inspire pricing levels for each segment of your target market.

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Looking Back: 30 Years of the World Wide Web

Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the birth of the World Wide Web. 30 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee submitted his proposal titled “Information Management” to CERN, a European physics lab.

The proposal asks the reader how scientists would manage increasingly large projects in the future. The proposal outlines the answer to that question. Which is what, in just a couple of years, would become what we know as the World Wide Web: a connected system for sharing information that would lead us into a communication revolution.

Thirty years ago, computer network systems had already been running and growing for years. Emails, message boards, shared files, and emoticons were not a strange concept to many, but the internet as it is today didn’t begin to take shape until the World Wide Web was introduced.

Open source code made it possible for anyone to create websites or browsers, and these web pages, browsers, and hyperlinks made the information available easy to find and easy to navigate.

The internet has reshaped itself in the last 30 years, but there are some really great memories of the World Wide Web of the past that we still are amused at, influenced by and have learned from.

This is just a short list of some of the influential sites and tech that has put us where we are today.

LiveJournal

One of the first variances of a social network was LiveJournal, a blog site where users could debate in comments as well as post original content, from writing pieces like fiction and poetry to visual art. LiveJournal still exists but is now owned by a Russian media company, with most of its original users scattering to Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and other social platforms.

Flickr

Photo sharing site Flickr was one of the web’s first forays into photo sharing since platforms like Friendster and MySpace were not photo-focused. The simple online gallery was a great platform for both pros and amateurs without the noise of other platforms that was the typical fare for sites in the early 2000s.

Amazon

Originally an online bookstore, Amazon was not always the giant retail/tech/entertainment conglomerate that it is today. Though it did take down some major bookstore chains early on, it was hard to predict that Amazon would become the phenomenon it is today.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets or CSS made it easy to learn how to create usable and attractive webpages, separating HTML from how a page looks. CSS also allows you to inspect a site’s code, and with that function, you’re able to change just about anything with a small edit to the code.

Yahoo

Yahoo is one of the longest surviving search engines, and even with a dwindling influence, to this day remains a top visited website. Search engines really built the web, and Yahoo was a major player, bringing users news, sports, market reports, and email all in the same space.

eBay

eBay lingers in the strange space between a free-for-all like Craigslist and the more organized Amazon storefront. eBay is the go-to place for buying just about anything you could want (most of the time used) online, and the mass of items in the site’s catalog is still as obscure, useful to just about anyone, but also just as downright weird as it was at its inception.

Internet Archive

Internet Archive is exactly what it sounds like, an archive of the internet itself. Take a trip back in time to see just what the web looked like in years past. In Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine you can check out the 349 billion web pages that the archive has stored, and reminisce about internet days-gone-by.

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Your Next Pitch: 5 Pitch Deck Slides To Hook Potential Investors [INFOGRAPHIC]

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New Products To Get Excited About At Mobile World Congress 2019

Once again it’s time for the developers of mobile devices to really show us what they’ve got with new and improved products at Mobile World Congress. This year’s event in Barcelona is already confirmed to be the showcase for the new Microsoft HoloLens 2, the LG L8, OnePlus’ 5G prototype, and the Huawei Mate X, notable for its foldability.

Huawei, despite its place in the news for more political/economic reasons, is really coming out as a top dog at this year’s MWC due to the foldable, 5G connectivity included, Mate X. But foldable phones and 5G aren’t the only notable announcements. These are some of the top product spotlights and announcements from MWC.

LG DualScreen

LG’s reply to the mad dash towards foldable phones is a second screen that can attach, essentially via a folio case, to the new LG V50, which is LG’s first 5G phone. Verge writer Vlad Savov got to go hand on with the new system. Read his experiences here.

Sony Xperia 1

The Xperia 1 is said to be the top phone for film and is one of Sony’s best phones, but that’s because it looks totally different than every other phone. No notch, no 5G, and no foldable design, but it does boast an extra tall screen, three cameras, and a 4K HDR OLED ultra-wide 21:9 display.

Microsoft HoloLens 2

Even though MWC is a very phone heavy event, Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 is a big point of conversation. The upgraded HoloLens 2 is a lighter, more sleek and comfortable mixed reality headset that has a larger field of view, and is much more powerful. The designed for business headset clocks in at $3,500, versus the $5,000 price tag of its original counterpart.

Nokia 9 PureView

Nokia is also making waves this year, with more than one new phone changing the game. Their most exciting phone is the Nokia 9 PureView, which is leapfrogging the MWC trend of having three rear cameras and is outfitted with five rear cameras. This ultra-powerful phone camera system could even replace some real cameras.

Samsung Galaxy S10

The Samsung family is really a huge presence at MWC, as the S10e, the S10 and the S10+ are all surpassing what has come before, with faster performance, larger and sharper screens, bigger, more powerful batteries, and more camera power. See a hands-on look that Mashable did with the three S10 phones here.

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Facebook’s New Podcast

It seems Facebook has its hands in a little bit of everything lately. From Facebook Portal, the Amazon Alexa enabled communication device to their new channel Facebook Watch, which houses videos from channels users follow as well as original content, there seems to be quite a move for Facebook to stay prominent in every channel, now including, podcasting.

A brand new podcast series focusing on entrepreneurship is the second podcast series to be released by the social media giant, and the first to be released in the US. The content is no surprise given the volume of businesses that use the platform (more than 90 million currently).

Called ‘Three And A Half Degrees: The Power of Connection,’ this show plays off of how technology has made it more convenient to connect (No longer six degrees of separation, but more like three and a half with the advances we have made).

Podcast host and VP of Business and Marketing Partnerships David Fischer says the podcast falls in line with the platform’s mission of helping businesses learn from one another.

Episode one includes an interview with Blake Mycoskie, the creator of TOMS shoes, and founders of fellow charitable business Two Blind Brothers, Bryan and Bradford Manning, and focuses on brands that prioritize a social mission over their growth or profit.

Season one will be seven episodes with fourteen guests, including Gary Vaynerchuck, Chris Kempczinski, Beth Comstock and more.

You can find episode one of ‘Three And A Half Degrees: The Power of Connection’ on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, and Stitcher.

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