5 Steps to Make Your Content Go Viral on Social Media

Have you ever bought a new outfit, posed around your office in it, but ended up sulking on your way home when no one gives you a single compliment in the entire work day? You get the same feeling when a strong piece of content doesn’t receive the number of social shares you hoped.
Spending long hours trying to perfect a long form blog post that does not resonate with your social audience can make you want to toss your laptop in a trash can, get a new one and try a career in NairaBet. Luckily, there are strategic ways to prevent this from happening.  Check out a 5-step strategy to create content and share it in the right way to maximize your social engagement on a consistent basis.
#1: Create Content around a Sharable Headline
On the average, 8 out of 10 people will read the headline on a copy, but only 2 out of 10 will keep reading, according to CopyBlogger. The chances of sharing a piece are even lower. This is why the headline is without a doubt the most important part of every blog post, e-book, guide, and whitepaper you write. It will literally make or break your chances of making a piece of content successful. But how do you predict which headlines will resonate? Here a few tricks to get you started:

·                   Numbered headlines are the way forward
This isn’t exactly information that will blow your mind. It’s something we should all know, but marketers often try to change things up with “how to” posts or “question” headlines. Sometimes these work, but time and time again numbers have proven to be the most click-worthy engaging headline makers.
Not only do numbers in a headline tell the reader that the post will be easy to digest rather than just a wall of text, but there’s also something visually intriguing about how a number looks in the midst of characters.

·                   Try using BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is by far an effective go-to content tool for generating content ideas and crafting sharable headlines. The tool allows you to type in any topic, keyword or website, and filter by date (as well as content type, language and country) to see which posts around that search received the most social shares. This will also enable you to gauge if your title has the potential to succeed based on what people are         already   sharing.

·         Use stimulating adjectives
Lastly, eye popping adjectives and superlatives almost always out-share other posts. Think “outrageous”, “mind-blowing”, “shocking”, and any other buzzwords that will bring your headline to life. Would you rather read about “10 Nite-Clubs in Victoria Island” or “10 Banging Nite-Clubs in Victoria Island”?


#2: Add your Personality to your Post
While the headline is by far the most important part of the content, if the post following the headline is written in a monotonous style, then you have failed. There is a reason for creating content, whether it’s for engagement or generating leads. The goals of your content will never be achieved if your copy is not infused with your engaging personality. While staying “on brand” is important, you need to find a happy-medium of staying in-line with your brands beliefs and tone, while infusing your personality within your writing style. That way you don’t bore your readers.
#3: Create Relevant and Engaging Images
We spend hours upon hours on Instagram for a good reason. Visuals are appealing, easy to digest, and even inspiring - they stimulate our brains and turn us from browsing mode to engaged mode quicker than any block of text. Nowadays including images in a blog post is a no-brainer, but the mistake many marketers make is choosing stock-like or unrelated images to fill space.
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·         Out-of-the-box images work. Think cats with laser beam eyes (but make sure it’s relevant to your post).
·         Images with big, readable headline text perform well. Displaying the headline of your article as a visual turns your article into a shareable goldmine. The chances of people sharing with the image become drastically higher, and images always outperform plain text posts on social media.
Also, use vibrant colors. Saturation works.
 #4: Reach out to Influencers and Quote them
Pull together your list of influencers, browse through their content, or recent interviews or appearances, and paraphrase or quote them with attribution to further support the points you’re making in your post. Then, when you share your content on social, tag them in your post and email or LinkedIn message them to inform them that you’ve included them in your article. This may spur them to re-share your content to their own following, which will expose you to an entirely new audience.

#5: Pay to Play
This is now the most important step to ensuring social engagement of your content. Waiting and relying on organic results no longer cuts it. You have to spend a bit of cash on post boosters and ads to ensure a wider reach. The simple fact is that the average organic reach is continuing to drop as the space gets more and more crowded.
This is not to say you shouldn’t be posting organically; most marketers can’t pay to promote every post yet still need to maintain a consistent stream of social content for brand ambassadors, people researching the brand, and current followers. But you won’t come close to reaching your potential if you’re not running ads. According to BI Intelligence, Facebook attracts roughly seven times the engagement that twitter does, so  it’s a good place to start. Spend a few bucks to run ads promoting your best content making sure you’re using Facebook’s targeting options to show your content to the most in-market audience.


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