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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