Promoting your content is a great way to attract attention for your blog. But, the difference between mediocre and successful blogs is that popular blogs know how to create content that people just can’t wait to share.
The trick is building your content in a way that makes it easy and irresistible for people to spread the word about it. When you do that, you’ll find that you’ll start gaining attention and traction with your blog.
So, how do you make your content more shareable? Here are five tips that will help.
1. Write stronger headlines.
Your headline is the most important aspect of any blog post.
If you want to stand out in this noisy world, you have to create headlines demand attention and stand out in the Twitter stream and RSS Reader.
Think about the articles you choose to read. Chances are good that the headlined piqued your curiosity and made you stop to check it out. You want to do the same thing with your blog posts.
Here are some formulas that work well:
- How To Posts. People turn to blogs to learn how to do something, so spell it out for them with a How To headline.
- Numbered Lists. Readers love content that’s easy to digest and a numbered list promises just that.
- Questions. Asking a question in your headline encourages readers to read the rest of your post and get the answer.
This just scratches the surface. If you want to get more headline tips, check out these fantastic resources:
- How to Write Magnetic Headlines – Copyblogger
- 5 Easy Tricks to Help You Write Catchy Headlines — Jeff Goins
- 52 Headline Hacks (ebook) — Jon Morrow
2. Create stellar content.
Okay, okay. I know writing good content is easier said than done. And, it should go without saying. Yet, there is still a ton of mediocre content on the web.
Once you capture people with a headline, you need solid content to back it up. What does that look like?
Mark Schaefer calls it content that is RITE — Relevant, Interesting, Timely and Entertaining. This is a great formula for helping you build content that people will want to consume.
3. Make it visual.
With the explosion of Pinterest, the importance of creating visual content has never been greater.
So, what does that mean? Here are a few ideas:
- Infographics. Infographics are a fantastic way to turn statistics, case studies and processes into content that people actually WANT to read and share. If you see a blog post with an infographic, I’m willing to bet that it has a high social media share count. Need some inspiration?
Here’s my Pinterest board with some infographicsthat I like. - Photography. You’re using photos with your posts, right? Adding a strong visual to your articles will encourage sharing on Pinterest and other visual-based networks. And, it’s even better if the photography is yours. Visual-based businesses (think interior designers, stylists, photographers, restaurants) are a natural fit for this.
- Video. Did you know that you could share video on Pinterest? Gini Dietrch has been sharing her Facebook Question of the Week on Pinterest in addition to promoting on their blog.
And, even if you’re not using Pinterest for your business, you’ll still find that visual content will be more attractive to your readership.
4. Add social sharing buttons.
This is a simple tip that often gets overlooked or implemented incorrectly. Adding social sharing buttons to your blog posts make it easier for visitors to spread the word on the social web.
Which social networks you add largely depends on your social media strategy and where you and your audience spends time online. However, I would consider adding Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus.
If your blog is built on a platform like WordPress, there are a number of great plugins that make it easy to add these sharing icons to your blog posts. For instance, I use Digg Digg, which gives me nice, uniform buttons that were a snap to install.
Also, don’t forget to set up your buttons properly. For instance, you want to make sure that the Twitter button is set up to include your username (i.e. @lauraclick) in the tweet so you can be notified when people share your content.
5. Make it Tweetable.
Part of writing a great headline is to make it easy to share on social networks. Because Twitter has character limitations, you’ll want to keep your headlines under 120 characters to give it plenty of room to fit in a tweet and allow for the ability to retweet the article.
In addition to creating Tweetable headlines, you can build in sharable nuggets of content throughout your post. One way to do that is to use a tool like Click to Tweet. Aaron Lee offers up a great step-by-step guide on how to do that.
And, if you want to see what it looks like, here’s a sample:
Make your content spread like wildfire by creating tweetable headlines, quotes & stats.
(Tweet this!)
What about you?
Have you employed any of these tactics? Which has worked best for you?
Image credit: Josh Harper
