Content marketing increases sales. It’s true. One of the simplest, yet most powerful ways to attract online traffic to your business website or blog to boost sales is known as “content marketing” – quality information that is written in a concise and clear voice that empowers potential customers.
How Content Marketing Increases Sales
Instead of directly promoting your product or service (imagine a product sales page), the objective is to provide useful knowledge that sparks interest in visitors seeking more information about your niche product and to generate trust and credibility in your business (how xyz product helped to solve xyz problem).
You want visitors to know that your business isn’t just offering a product, but a singular state of mind that incorporates all there is to know about the past, present, and future of what you’re offering. When consumers buy a BMW or a Honda, they’re not just purchasing an automobile, they’re wantonly acquiring someone’s concept of a car. The perspective you share in your online content should clearly get across the reasons your product is miles apart from others and why.
After visitors read your online marketing content, deciding to purchase from you should seem instinctive and incidental due to the quality and scope of information you provide. In other words, buying what your business offers should feel like a natural progression for visitors.
4 Steps Content Marketing Increases Sales
1. Content Marketing Helps with Search Engine Rankings
Original content on your blog or website increases search engine ranking, so it’s vital that the content you create appeals to your business and target audience and is fresh, innovative, concise and organized.
The higher value search engines place on our content means that your blog or web pages may appear on the coveted first page of results for a search instead of buried beneath thousands of other listings.
Online sales don’t always begin with a search for a product. Say you are a Shake Shack and you want to come up higher for Astor Place. The website already has your address, but writing pieces about Astor Place will help search engines to know that you’re associated with that area. Creating a simple blog about the neighborhood can help you rank higher on Google search. Just remember to make sure it is relevant, easily readable by your audience and that you’re not just keyword stuffing.
2. Content Marketing Confirms You Are An Expert
The content you create for readers should be filled with valuable insights, instill trust, and serve to confirm you as an expert source of unique and unequaled information. You want readers to consider your business as the indisputable choice when they need what you offer.
Say you are a dermatologist offering various fat removal services. Your potential customers may never have experimented with different methods. Writing original content on the differences between Kybella and CoolMini, or what to expect of your first CoolMini treatment will help potential clients understand that you know your stuff and put them at ease.
3. Key Words
In order to rank high, you need to focus on keywords relevant to your content. Because you don’t just want visitors to your site, you want the right kind of specific visitors. A keyword is any word or short phrase that describes a website topic or page. The more a keyword is used by searchers and websites the more attraction power it has.
Say you are a doggy concierge in San Francisco. You may want to think of working the following keywords:
Location: San Francisco, San Fran, Knob Hill
Location + Service: San Francisco dog walking, San Francisco dog sitting
To get keyword ideas, do a search on Google and check out related terms on the bottom of the screen.
4. Make it Shareable
In addition to being quality content, content marketing gives you plenty to share on Social Media. Once you’ve created a fantastic piece of content, make sure to share it to your social media channels. This is especially beneficial if you create evergreen content – content that can last a long time before getting old.
How to Get Eyes on Your Content Marketing
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Social Media
If you expect Google to do all the work for you, you’re not going to maximize that fantastic content you’ve just created. There is plenty of competition out there, so you will need to help the content get found. Share all that original content via social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. If your content is well written, engaging, and serves a purpose, your audience will share your posts with their friends, family, and business associates which should also help you increase sales. You can use a social media scheduling tool like Socialdraft to schedule all your shares and get reports on your performance.
Forums
Share your content to forums including Digg, reddit, and more industry-focused forums. The more eyes you get on the content, the higher the chances of you getting a potential customer to convert.
Have questions on content marketing? Reach out to us here or join our Facebook group for digital marketers.
Social media fails are the nightmare of SMMs. When you’re creating content for clients, the last thing you want to do is create a piece that offends and ends up getting you fired. It’s not just that gig that is on the line, it’s your reputation (and that of your client). Today, we’ll guide you on how to edit social media content. The focus here is how to look at your content before scheduling it to social media. These are simple questions to ask yourself which will help you to Edit Social Media Content before going ahead to schedule it.
How to Edit Social Media Content
Does this post provide value?
People are going through content fatigue. Every single day they are bombarded by messages from people just like you who are trying to get them to click, buy or share. Before it was just television ads. Now it’s social media, ads, product placements, and news. So, if you are going to either create or share a piece of content, make sure that your audience will find it useful and that you make its usefulness ridiculously obvious. Will your community find this content to be of value? If the answer is no, then you need to get back to the drawing board. If you’d like to see a good example of this, check out Social Media Examiner‘s Pinterest account. Their ultimate goal is to get people to attend their conference, how do they work to achieve this daily, by sharing posts that are of incredible value to their community.
Does this post help you achieve your ultimate goal?
When we spoke about how to create a social media plan, we discussed how you need to have SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely) goals. Each time you create a piece of content for social media, you need to make sure that it is a pathway to achieve this goal.
The above is a great example from WordSwag‘s Instagram account. Their goal is simple, get people to download their app (it’s awesome BTW). Their write up is simple, clear, and leads to a simple call to action asking their users to download the update.
Not all goals have to be a direct call to action as this. Many times this can be asking for a share, a comment, a click, a tag…this all depends on your brand of business and the goals you’ve set.
Is this format the best for the Social Network I’m publishing to?
If you’re creating the same type of content for all social networks, you’re making a HUGE mistake. Each network has a different audience. Some networks do better with video, others with live streaming, others with long form content…so before you schedule to a network, think about the best way to package your message so it makes the most impact.
Is this high quality content?
By high quality I don’t mean glossy. By high quality I mean content that matches the voice and feel of your brand. Any piece of content you put out needs to meet the standards of your brand or client. So, for example, a meme may be making the rounds that is getting lots of engagement, but if it does not fit your brand, posting it may give you a temporary boost, but this will probably be the wrong audience.
What time should I post this?
Posting time makes a HUGE difference across all social networks. While we suggest that you schedule your content ahead of time (this will open up time for you to engage your audience, analyze your content, and make adjustments as needed), you need to be aware of the best posting times for each social network.
It’s the same as if you were handing out flyers at the mall, it does no good to pass them out when nobody is there. Your posting time will change according to your audience, location, time zone, and even need to be adjusted when there are major holidays or events.
This is a biggie…you need to always be aware of the events that are going on. If ever any disaster happens, you need to grab a few seconds to review your calendar to make sure that nothing that could be conceived as insensitive comes out. You can do this easily with Socialdraft where you can drag & drop content to another date in seconds.
Is the Grammar Right?
We all know the joke, if you want engagement on a social media post…misspell something. Yup, it’s true, but this is not the kind of attention you want for your brand or clients. Before posting run your write up through a system like Grammarly. It’s not fool proof, but will catch around 75% of your mistakes. Once you’ve done this (and I know it sounds silly), read the post aloud. This will help you to make sure that it makes sense when read and help you to best edit social media content.
Did I Add the Right Hashtags (Depending on the Network)
Is this a Twitter or Instagram post? Then hashtags are a must. Do your hashtag research, check how they have been used before, and then make sure to add hashtags so that you can increase your reach.
RELATED ARTICLE: Instagram Hashtag Directory
Who Can I Tag?
Tagging people and brands has been proven to increase your reach. Before you schedule your post, take a look at it and see if there are people or brands you should be tagging. For example Max. Social Business tagged Socialdraft on their share of one of our posts. This made it so our community manager got a notification and let leadership know. We, of course, liked & retweeted their content. Easy to do & smart.
What Call-to-Action is Best for the Post?
Calls-to-Action work. When you add a call-to-action, you can increases click thru up to 371%. That’s ridiculously powerful, so before you schedule, make sure to take a few seconds to incorporate a call to action into your social media post. Always make your audience work for you just like Idea Girl Media does. Their posts are always of service to the community and include very clear calls-to-actions which increase their engagement across all social networks.
Will My Images Look Gorgeous?
Each social network requires a different type of image, so while you may be tempted to use the same image for each network, taking a few extra seconds to create a new one in the right size can make all the difference. On top of this, you need to keep mobile in mind. According to MarketingLand, 80% of social media time now spent on mobile devices. Make sure that if you include text in your write up, that it is easily seen on social. Oh yeah, and make sure they look good. We already know about Martha Stewart’s Russian Dressing snafu. Granted, she owned it, but your brand or business may not be able to survive the negative attention.
I keep these simple tips on how to Edit Social Media Content on a post-it right above my desk. This way, I never forget to triple check all my content before it goes out.
How to Manage Your Social Media with Socialdraft
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After reading this, I’m sure you’re thinking you’ve got a lot of work to do and that’s just when you edit Social Media Content. Lucky for you there are tools to help you work smarter, not harder. Socialdraft is one of those tools. Socialdraft is a social media calendar scheduling tool that allows you to easily work with teams, manage clients, pull reports, and engage your audience.
Socialdraft works with Facebook business pages, Facebook groups, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn Business pages, Pinterest Boards and Instagram.
Socialdraft Features:
– Engage your audience on the all-in-one inbox.
– Monitor your brand & convert good mentions to social media posts in seconds
– Repost Instagram posts to all your connected social networks
– Duplicate posts
– Bulk schedule with our CSV bulk uploader
– Assign tasks to team members
– Download calendars as PDF’s to send to clients
– Set special permissions for team members and more.
If you are curious about Socialdraft, take it for a risk-free trial. You’ll get to try out all the features and decide if Socialdraft is right for you.
You’ve probably found yourself scratching your head on plenty of occasions when writer’s block hits and you just have no freakin’ idea what to post on social media. Content curation is probably one of the most daunting time sucks that social media managers face on a daily basis. You can’t just post content, you need to find that content and re-package it to make it interesting to your community in hopes that they engage and convert.
How to Find Social Media Content
That’s one of the reasons we based Socialdraft on a calendar, because it helps you to envision the days of the month and special events…but getting started while looking at a tabula rasa can be overwhelming. Just how are you to fill up that calendar? After all, you’ve got to create all of the following daily:
- 1 Facebook page post
- 1 Facebook group post
- 3 Twitter posts
- 3 Pinterest pins
- 1 Instagram image
- 1 LinkedIn update
Today we’re going to break down some of the sources that the team at Socialdraft uses on a daily basis to get our content calendar packed & ready.
If you don’t already have a social media calendar, it is something that you need to implement as soon as possible. A social media calendar will allow you to plan out your content so it is in line with your sales and marketing goals. It will keep you organized and make the whole curation process simple, since you will be able to visualize when you need to post content.
If you work with a team, a content calendar will make your life even easier. All of you will be able to collaborate to remove redundancy and be more effective.
A social media calendar will also help you to keep a consistent rythm on your social media account. When social media accounts are inactive, they can make it seem as if the business is not doing well, does not care about their audience, or simply will allow the account to be forgotten. This is the last thing you want to come out of your social media efforts.
How to Find Content for Your Social Media Calendar
reddit
No, I did not make a mistake in capitalization. reddit is never capitalized. It is also one of my favorite places to find content that is new and relevant for our audience. reddit is a forum made up of tiny little forums called subreddits. You can find almost any interest there AND tons of content (TONS). Not sure if your industry is covered…I can pretty much bet it is. Here are a few sample examples of what the reddit community has to offer, I’ll give a broad example, a more focused example, and a hyper-focused example for each:
Social Media
Coffee
Sports
Art
If you need a little guidance on how to use reddit just click the link to get a guide to marketing on reddit.
Twitter
Twitter is awesome. It is probably the number 1 spot for content sharing. Follow industry leaders so that you can be in the know when they discuss something new. Twitter search is fantastic and on Twitter Advanced Search you can drill down to exclude words, pick exact phrases, find content from only special accounts, pick certain locations, and even select a time period. It is one of the most underused and most valuable feature on Twitter. You can learn how to use Twitter advanced search here.
Instagram & Socialdraft Photos
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Instagram is a great content curation tool because it is real time. You can hop on Instagram and not only see “Top Posts” for a particular topic or hashtag, but you can also see what people are sharing in real time. This is relevant content and great for sharing to social. Sometimes, it just gives you a little inspiration so you can get out of that rut. If you pair up Instagram with the Socialdraft photos feature, it’s even better. If you find a piece of content you want to share, simply click “Share” and Socialdraft will prep a post that you can share to all of your social media networks. It’s super sweet for repost campaigns. Socialdraft user Cognac Maniacs’ Instagram account is built 100% on reposts. They were able to grow their account to almost 1,000 followers in 6 months.
Google & Social Media Analytics
Analytics are awesome. You should be checking Analytics out on a weekly basis to find out which content is performing best so that you can repackage it and re-share to Social Media.
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is an outstanding tool for finding relevant content for any industry. It’s a free tool up to a certain number of results. You just enter your keyword and pulls up the most shared blog posts on social media. I did a search for one of my favorite chefs, Eric Ripert. If you check out the top 2 results, you will see that the number one result has had 10K+ shares on Facebook. That’s great content to share if your audience is interested in cooking, French cuisine, Chefs, and (of course) Eric Ripert.
Quora
Quora is based on niches, so simply checking out those niches will give you great content to share. In the example above, I’ve searched Eric Ripert, Quora gives you the most popular questions relating to him. Visit Quora on a weekly basis to find the most popular content related to your topic.
How to add content to your content calendar
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Now that you have all these sources, you need to begin to plan on what and how you will share it to your social media channels. Let’s go through the process:
1. Special dates & events
Sit and think about special dates and events that are coming up. Begin by crafting content against these dates so that you know they are taken care of.
2. Plan Out The Best Time To Post
Posting at optimal times is key, so log onto your analytics for each of your dashboards to figure out when your audience is online, or – if you have Socialdraft – just select TrueTime when you schedule.
3. Plan Out Your Strategy
You can’t just post content willy nilly. Spend a little time to think about how all the posts will go together to craft a story. Is there a flow? Will your images have a cohesive look. These things matter.
How to Manage your Social Media Accounts
Socialdraft is an all-in-one Dashboard that helps you manage multiple Social Media Acccounts. It is the most robust and simple tool for agencies and teams to effectively handle social media. With Socialdraft you can:
Schedule posts to Facebook pages, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn Business Pages (and one LinkedIn account) and Pinterest Boards
Schedule posts individually, as recurring posts, or bulk upload them as CSV
Easily re-schedule with a drag & drop action
Schedule GIFs to Facebook and Twitter
Download content calendars as PDF
Find content on Instagram and easily schedule reposts not just to Instagram but to all other social networks
Engage on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin
Download Facebook and Twitter reports
and tons more…
If you are curious about Socialdraft, take it for a risk-free trial. You’ll get to try out all the features and decide if Socialdraft is right for you.
We get it. Heck, we’re an SMM dashboard. Every single day we are doing the same thing you are doing; trying to come up with great topics for content marketing and social media.
You and I both know that content marketing is not an add-on, it’s a must for content marketers, social media managers, community managers, and SMB’s. This means blogs, social media, and social media engagement. It’s time-consuming. It’s tedious. But it can be done better.
How to curate content with Socialdraft
There are dashboards that “curate content”. These dashboards result in the same articles being shared by ninjas and influencers all over social media. What does your audience do when you share this content? They fall asleep.
What you need is a way to fill up your content calendar with industry relevant information that has not been shared by everyone, their mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Stay involved in social media, listen to influencers, and check reddit for new and fresh information.
Become a Thought Leader
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Sheeple are so yesterday. Stop sharing all the same tired content from “influencers”. Your audience has seen it before, most likely 5-10 times today already. They are going to skip this old content. Instead, share the newest, hottest content and keep your audience engaged…and save yourself time while doing it. No need to spend time creating content when someone else did it for you.
When you click to share the content (which is super easy with our Share button – lets you create social media posts to share to Facebook pages, one personal account, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest), just edit the write up to add your two cents. You’re sharing content, but you’re adding your own spice. You’re going to prove you’re an expert and that you can sift through the bs.
Make Your Marketing Team Happy
[fve]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T4qyeEYcv8[/fve]
We both know that to hire a marketing firm is super expensive. Every business can’t afford 2-10k per month for a marketing firm. Socialdraft alerts find that gorgeous content for you. Find it, share it, and engage the content creator to build a strong relationship and get more love in the future. That’s smart marketing.
Grow your Social Following
It’s not social media without a community. Using Socialdraft alerts to engage the community will keep you in touch with the content creators, the people who could write about your brand, the people who matter. Share their content, engage them, and watch those relationships (and that ROI) get stronger by the day.
Ramp up your PR
Set up your alerts to monitor your brand. You’ll know in real time whenever someone mentions your brand, business (or your clients). It’s like having your own PR agent taking care of you on a day to day basis.
Socialdraft’s listening tools let you know who is creating content about your brand or business. You should be using that curate content. And keep in mind, you’re not on social to shove your brand down their throat. You’re on social to build relationships. Relationships with clients, press, and influencers. Let them do the talking, simply amplify your message.
Stay Abreast of Your Industry
You need to know what’s going on in your industry. If you’re like me, you’re probably behind your computer all day. You can use Socialdraft alerts to track what your competition is talking about, what the press is talking about, and – most importantly – what your clients and audience are discussing.
So go ahead and sign up for our risk-free trial and check out all the cool ways you can use alerts to Curate content with Socialdraft.
What Else Does Socialdraft Do?
Socialdraft is an all-in-one Dashboard that helps you manage multiple Social Media Accounts. It is the most robust and simple tool for agencies and teams to effectively handle social media. With Socialdraft you can:
Schedule posts to Facebook pages, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn Business Pages (and one LinkedIn account) and Pinterest Boards
Schedule posts individually, as recurring posts, or bulk upload them as CSV
Easily re-schedule with a drag & drop action
Schedule GIFs to Facebook and Twitter
Download content calendars as PDF
Find content on Instagram and easily schedule reposts not just to Instagram but to all other social networks
Engage on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin
Download Facebook and Twitter reports
and tons more…
If you are curious about Socialdraft, take it for a risk-free trial. You’ll get to try out all the features and decide if Socialdraft is right for you.
Digital marketing is a relatively young practice that is changing and developing every day. One of the facets of digital marketing that needs constant improvement and enhancement is content marketing. By definition, content marketing is the practice of publishing relevant content that will push prospects towards making a purchase. It has its basis on SEO (Search Engine Optimization), but the benefits go way beyond this. Content marketing sets you up as an expert, allows you to create conversation, and helps with search engines. However, we’re experiencing a plethora of content which proves problematic. If everyone is creating content for marketing, how do you stand out? Experts believe that content marketing is speedily and surely shifting towards bigger, better, and brighter changes in the future that could require businesses and brands to adjust their efforts to meet better results.
Want to find out how good content will look in the future? Read on to find out more about the future of content marketing.
The Future of Content Marketing
1. Statistics Will Be Big – People want information that they can use, information they can trust, and information that’s backed up by research and science. If you choose to publish content based off of your own opinions, your readers might not be inclined to believing what you have to say. It’s important that you read up on the latest statistics and if possible, incorporate some studies and research into your content to make it much more reliable.
2. Audiences Will Ask for More Specifics – When individuals look for information online, they want to find answers and solutions to their problems. If you give them vague details, they’re not likely to be able to use the information you provide to resolve their situation. They will want hard facts, clear cut steps, and specific solutions to help them through their problems and concerns. Don’t tell them that marketing on Facebook will increase their web traffic. Give them stats on the average increase to website traffic for business pages that market on Facebook.
3. Shorter Snippets, More Meat – Today, speed is becoming more and more of a consideration for individuals who search for information on the internet. They don’t only want to load their information fast – they want to read it fast and get the facts they need at the same time. The future of content marketing is shifting towards shorter snippets of information with much more meat. It doesn’t matter how short your content becomes – as long as it offers readers the information they want to see, they’re likely to read on through and patronize you.
4. Design and Content Come Hand in Hand – With so many other competitors in the industry, there will be very few factors that set you apart from other businesses and brands. Even if your content is relevant, timely, and reliable, if your website design doesn’t appeal to your readers, they’re much more likely to turn elsewhere. The future of content marketing isn’t concerned with content alone; design will likely play an important role.
5. Originality Will Dominate – If a bunch of websites offer the same information over and over again, readers might not find a reason to suffer through the same old song. Make sure you serve up original content that readers aren’t likely to find anywhere else to increase your authority and reliability. This could be the same old content presented a different way. Start experimenting with gifs, videos, and even live chats to get more eyes on your brand.
6. Social Media Will Power Content Marketing – Due to the large amount of content that is out on the web, social media will become more and more important in disseminating this content. Social media shares by influencers will become more and more valueable as will click thru and time on page. This means it will be imperative that you put a strong social media campaign in place to get more eyes on your content; and that you think about the website architecture that will assist you in keeping people on your content.
7. More Targeted Content – In order to reach a more selective, distinguished audience, marketing content will be designed more specifically with made-to-order content appealing to customer demographics and the various phases related to product selection.
8. Content Marketing Formats Wii Expand – Content marketing will no longer be confined to articles, and will expand to many different, more creative forms of content, such as podcasts, infographics, lectures, videos, case studies and tutorials. This will enhance the popularity of social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.
9. More Focus on Consumer – Content marketing will spend more time on developing interactions related to a consumer’s point of view, brand loyalty, and complaint resolution.
10. Local and Emotional Appeal – More time will be spent on learning about local consumer locations, and its influence on families, and lifestyle choices that involve shopping and dining. Content will be designed to appeal to customer sentiment and emotions.
It has become absolutely essential to leverage any and all tools available to create killer content these days, especially considering the fact that we live in the middle of the most competitive business environment that ever existed.
How to Curate Your Social Media Content With Reddit
Because you are going to be going up against stiff competition across the board, and because you’re going to need to release top quality content to your market on a routine and regular basis, you’re going to need to be able to effortlessly curate new topics, new ideas, and new approaches.
It’s also a great marketing resource – if you know what you are doing (you can check out tutorials here – part 1 & part 2)
Reddit can be your best friend in finding relevant content
The “homepage” of the Internet, reddit, is an online form of sorts that is the home to millions and millions of people sharing all kinds of content across almost every single topic imaginable. Using reddit as a curation tool as well as using reddit as a content source can give you a huge advantage over your competition.
Here’s how to do exactly that!
Subscribe to ALL of the subreddits in your market
The very first thing you’re going to want to do is search for and subscribe to each and every single one of the subreddits in your marketplace – of which there is no doubt going to be more than you could have ever imagined.
The easiest way to do this is to search out one subreddit that relates to your particular niche and then spread out from there. These subreddits with almost always interlink with one another, and you’ll be able to pull from a variety of different resources without any headache or hassle whatsoever.
When you have subscribed to a subreddit, look on the side bar to find more relevant subs to subscribe to.
Organize everything with the multi-reddit tool
Once you have begun to use Reddit as a curation tool with all of the subreddit subscriptions you’ve been signing up for, you’re going to want to create a multi-reddit that encapsulates each and every one of these niche groups.
This is going to pull content from each and every one of those subreddits and collect them in a single source, allowing you to quickly and efficiently go through all of the new content that has been released to Reddit that day.
This is a much faster way to navigate the see of content that floods and read it on a day to day basis and will give you a tremendous edge when you’re looking to source Reddit for content ideas.
Start pulling sources from the “Top” content tab
On top of that, you’re also going to want to look into pulling content sources directly from the “Top” content tab in each and every one of the subreddits that you have subscribed to.
This tab is going to organize all of the posts in that particular subreddit to show you the most popular ones first, and you will be able to choose a different timeline to better narrow down your search results.
This gives this particular option is what is really going to supercharge your ability to use credit to gain a tremendous advantage over the rest of your competition. It really won’t get a lot easier than this – it’s like instant brainstorming already handled for you.
Use it smartly, and you’ll know exactly what kind of content your market already reacts favorably to and then can use that as a print to produce your own.
Post to the Reddit community and leverage their responses
At the end of the day, one of the smartest ways to use Reddit as a content marketing tool and especially as a content source is to participate in the different subreddits that you have subscribed to and then call information from everyone that posts a response.
An approach like this one can transform the way that you use Reddit completely, not only helping you use Reddit for content ideas but also using read it has a tool to farm out the creation of the actual content itself.
This is a savvy move that smart marketers can leverage to speed up their content creation timeline while at the same time making sure that answers are relevant, interesting, and engaging. You won’t find a better approach for using reddit as both a content source and using reddit as a curation tool.
Since one of the most powerful ways to expand your company’s reach and generate trust and credibility in your business is by including well-written, quality information on your website or blog, many writers strive to produce content they hope will go viral.
Tips On Creating Viral Content
So it’s interesting to note that Brian Carter, co-creator of the ebook “CONTAGIOUS CONTENT – What People Share On Facebook and Why They Share It,” says it’s become cliché to call marketing campaigns “viral” when they aren’t.
Carter is also the author of “The Like Economy” and “LinkedIn for Business” and coauthor of the bestselling “Facebook Marketing.” He has 13 years experience with Google, Twitter and Facebook marketing, both as a consultant and marketing agency director.
Carter explains that getting a few shares, or maybe even twenty shares, does not make your post truly viral. And because EdgeRank — an algorithm developed by Facebook to govern what is displayed and how high on the News Feed — diminishes every post’s visibility by 70-97%, Carter prefers to focus instead on “the shareability of individual posts.”
7 Functions of Highly Shared Posts
In addition to 31,000 data points from 67 Facebook pages, in Carter’s book they also reviewed 30 days’ worth of posts from many other pages to find the most shared posts from each. Both of these surveys combined resulted in this tip list.
Highly shareable posts do at least one of the following:
1. GIVE: Offers, discounts, deals or contests that everyone can benefit from, not just one sub-group of your friends.
2. ADVISE: Tips, especially about problems that everyone encounters; for example, how to get a job or how to beat the flu.
3. WARN: Warnings about dangers that could affect anyone.
4. AMUSE: Funny pictures and quotes, as long as they’re not offensive to any group- sometimes the humor isn’t quite as strong or edgy- it has to appeal to a general audience.
5. INSPIRE: Inspirational quotes.
6. AMAZE: Amazing pictures or facts.
7. UNITE: A post that acts as a flag to carry and a way to brag to others about your membership in a group that’s doing pretty darned good, thank you very much.
Once you have created a campaign that is worth sharing, Carter suggests 4 additional ways you can incentivize your audience to share.
4 Ways You Can Incentivize Your Audience to Share
1. Refer-a-Friend: This campaign is centered around a compelling offer. Create special offers for both “referrers” and “referees”. If you are using a platform that enables you to collect social sharing data, you can gather metrics such as your biggest influencers on social.
2. Social Sweepstakes: Create a contest and get your entrants to spread the word on your behalf. Social sweepstakes tend to really get a lot of shares since people want to be recognized for their contributions. Check out a recent contest that Marketo created asking Facebook fans to submit photobombs.
3. Polls and Voting: Everyone has an opinion and they are usually more than happy to share it with you. Creating Facebook posts that engage your audience and compels them to share their opinions is a great way to ask for the share.
4. Flash Deals: Create a fun visual way to represent a flash deal, or use a social sharing application that has the functionality to create a time-sensitive deal. Putting a time limit on your offer will really amp up your shares.
4 Mistakes That Prevent People from Sharing Your Posts
Carter insists some of the things we do that get in the way of shareability happen in the conception of posts. Some happen in the execution.
These are the biggest no-no’s if you want your post to get shared:
1. Talking about yourself
2. Being to edgy or offensive
3. Being too obscure or niche
4. Asking for likes
Highly Liked But Barely-Shared Posts
One of the first hypotheses Carter and his co-creator developed was that there are many posts that are highly-liked but barely-shared.
“We suspect people view a ‘Like’ on a post as something that happens between an individual and the person or page that posted it. This liking also bonds us with other likers of that thing. Since we’re not always sure who will see that we liked something, we consider whether it would look bad to others that we liked it.”
Carter suggests we may never click “like” on a controversial post, but when we click Share, we’re obviously saying, “I like this so much I wish I had created it myself. I want everyone I’ve connected with on Facebook to see it. I’m ok with my family, coworkers, supervisors, bosses, and anybody else I’ve friended, knowing that I like it.”
How Often Do People Share?
One-third of the posts Carter reviewed did not get shared at all. Carter claims it’s easy to get a couple of people who work for a brand or who work for the brand’s agency to share posts, but it’s harder to get more than five or ten people to share a post.
“How many posts had more than 5 shares? Only about half of them. Only 20% of posts were shared more than 50 times. But these numbers aren’t as meaningful as percentages, because what if you have a million fans? How many shares are significant?”
According to Carter, only one out of every 200 post viewers who saw a post shared it. Only about 20% of posts were shared by a higher proportion of viewers than that.
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