You probably know that creating good content is important to grow your business. But what if you write something and nobody reads it? That’s not going to help your business much.
Carol shares some of her best tactics in “7 Tricks to Make Your Content Go Viral” on Bank of America’s Small Business Community. Carol begins:
“Whether on Facebook, Twitter or your favorite site, have you ever found yourself in the middle of an article that was something along the lines of “7 Ways Your Business is Like a Rescue Dog” and then thought to yourself, “Why am I reading this?”
Well, it turns out that there’s actually some science behind why you find yourself tumbling down the Internet content rabbit-hole. In fact, there are certain tricks and formats for creating and packaging content that are widely used by the media as “clickbait”—aka, a method to get you to fill that knowledge gap by clicking on the content.
Because content is critical for small businesses from brand awareness to search engine rankings, you need to know the best way to get people to read and share the content you created. Here are 7 tricks to help you package the content you create so that you can get more people to read and share it.
1. Listicles
A listicle is an article format made up of a list of tips. Just as I did with the title to this article, putting things into compelling lists is a great way to get clicks and shares. Creating your content within the context of “Top 5 Ways” or “10 Tips” is a great, easy method for readers to consume content.
2. Photos
Back before languages were developed, people used hieroglyphics for communication. Then, languages were developed. Now, we are back to emojis. This cycle is due to our short attention spans and the desire to consume content visually. Add photos to your tweets and articles. Use platforms that encourage photo sharing, like Instagram. The more that you can engage with visuals, the more likely you are to get engagement, as statistics show that these postings are shared exponentially more often on average that those with no photos.
3. Bust myths
Busting a myth is always a great way to get someone’s attention. Curiosity naturally makes you want to know what it is that you don’t know.”
You can read the rest of the post here.
