Planning Content Your Readers Will Want to Share

Published Jul, 16 2015
Content Marketing
This session was presented live at a past SoundBoard event.
Content Track
11:00 am - 11:50 am

Planning sharable contentThe people in your target audience are flooded with content in their feeds and inboxes every day. How are you going to cut through the noise and make a meaningful impression? Add value to people’s daily lives — and your marketing goals — by delivering content that is relatable enough to be shared!

Build Loyalty, Not Likes

Having a large audience is great, but having a loyal and engaged network can be more rewarding. It is more important to focus on increasing the quality of the interactions you’re having with your readers than the number of interactions you’re having.

Instead of obsessing over increasing the number of followers, page views, or likes you have, instead focus on how you can publish content your readers will find compelling. If you are successful with this, you will build loyal followers. In the long run, your other metrics will naturally fall into place, even if you happen to lose a few followers first.

Benefit Your Community

We know we want our content to be more shareable, but how do we make that happen? Typically, shareable content is something that clearly resonates with your reader in some way. It is either interesting, thoughtful, funny, or otherwise moving. But this isn’t just about making your content more interesting, more thoughtful, or funnier. It’s about consciously considering how everything you publish will affect your reader and how it might benefit their lives.

Does this mean you shouldn’t talk about your products or services? Not at all! Depending on your business, not talking about those things might actually hurt your content. However, it’s important that you focus on conveying the core value you offer, and that you think about how your readers might relate to this.

What is it exactly that makes you special? Why did you get into your business in the first place, and why should anyone care about what you do? The answer to this most likely involves the nature of the role your business plays in your community. Understanding the nature of that role will likely help you become more relevant to your audience. Figure out how to infuse your content with the spirit of the value your business offers to everyone around you, and you’re far more likely to generate content that excites people enough to share!

Get Over the Virtual Wall

When your audience is hidden behind a virtual wall, it’s often more difficult to connect with them well enough to fully engage them. One tip to overcoming this is to imagine what would happen if your online marketing campaigns took place offline.

You probably wouldn’t expect to stay in business long if you just yelled at people to come see your products, then ignored them when they visited your store, or forgot them after they made a purchase! But these types of one-sided interactions are all too common when it comes to how customers are treated online. Since technology often obscures the social cues that influence our customer interactions, it may be a good idea for us to go out of our way to make sure that we’re not dropping the ball with our online interactions.

Focus on building meaningful two-way interactions with your audience, and your content marketing campaigns are far more likely to be shared, delivering long-term value for your business.