5 ways to make your content more shareable

If you haven’t guessed by now, the concept of creating “shareable content” goes way beyond the actual writing and publishing. In fact, it almost has nothing to do with it at all. 

The experience you have in producing your content - be it a video, blog post, advertisement or otherwise - is completely different from the experience your viewers or readers will have consuming it. What’s important is that your audience has the experience you intended, so they can relate to the content and thus find it shareable.

So how does this have nothing to do with the actual writing and publishing?
The secret is to know why people choose to share content. After all, you could write a really great blog post and no one will even read it unless they think it’s worth time away from their other distractions. So go behind the scenes and find out what makes your audience tick, what experience you want them to have - then create your content around it.

That brings us to our 1st tip for creating shareable content:

  1. Create relatable content:

 When you publish a piece of content that aids your audience in some way - provides entertainment, subscribes to their notion of self-identity or informs and educates, for example -  they’ll be more likely to relate to it and consequently share it. The first step to creating relatable content? Know your audience. Know what makes them laugh, inspires them, makes them cry and even what they fear.

 2. Find out what your audience is searching for:

 What’s trending on the internet? You’ve researched your audience, but do you know what  they’re searching for? Make it a point to stay up-to-date with what your audience is interested in at the moment, so you can better serve their interests and create content that’s ahead of the wave. The more useful and valuable your content, the more your audience is likely to consume it and share it.

Pro tip: Master the art of storytelling. Whatever the content may be, create a story to make it interesting & easier to consume.

 3. Write to inform, not (only) to better your SEO ranking:

 With Google focusing more and more on the quality of content, relevancy is more important than ever. Having the most appropriate content, long enough to effectively engage your readers (rather than satisfy archaic SEO parameters), is what you should keep in mind. That said, remember to optimise each piece of content for search engines - if no one can find it, they won’t be able to share it.

 4. How, when and where:

 There’s a vast amount of content being published on the Internet every millisecond. That, combined with the audience’s ever-shortening attention span on the internet, means you have just a few seconds’ window to engage your reader. Unless you can reach them with content that matters to them - when, where and how they want it - you won’t be able to engage them. Plan how you’ll be publishing your content (which format is your TG most attracted to?) where you’ll publish it (what sites/platforms do they frequent?) and what they will be doing when you publish it (a working mother will have no time to watch your video at 9am). 

 5. Social Media Icons:

 Last but not the least, make it extremely easy for your audience to share your content. Keep those icons within reach, so they don’t have to spend another few seconds looking for them (let’s not give them reason to reconsider!).