4 Ways To Make Your Content More Shareable

Nov 9, 2011 by Alex Minchin

One of the biggest challenges of website owners/marketers is creating content that people will share with their contacts. Having others do the hard work for you is an art we would all like to master. Sadly, it’s not that easy to do!

Over the past few years we’ve been bombarded with methods of creating content. Similarly, the end-user has been bombarded with so much trash that the opportunity to impress has been greatly reduced. In summary, we have just a small window of opportunity to engage our visitor.

Here are 4 tips for making your content more shareable:

1. Structure your content

Reading content is an investment of someone’s time, and therefore the structure is important. Use short paragraphs that are easy to read, and use bullet points and lists where appropriate.  This will make for an easy read, and will help your reader memorise the subject you’re talking about.

If your article is slightly longer, think about how you’re planning on holding someone’s attention. You’ll notice on some sales letters that the author will tell you what you’re going to find out (later in the article) early on. They might even repeat it again mid-way down the page. This is because it helps to keep the reader engaged, and gives them an incentive to keep reading.

I find that periodically checking in on websites likes Copyblogger help to give me fresh ideas once in a while. I also find that consciously taking note of how magazines and newspapers structure their content is useful too.

2. Use images

Images help to break up content and reinforce a point. They also help to lighten the content and make it less of a chore to read. This works particularly well if your article is slightly longer than average (approx. 250-300 words).

Infographics have become really popular over the past year or two. When they’re good they’re great… And when they’re bad, they are a savage waste of the designer’s time. Creating a good infographic involves some serious skill, but that shouldn’t stop you from creating graphs or other images to illustrate your point.

You can use free software such as Gimp to create your images. Another tip is to create a graph in software such as Excel or Numbers, and then edit them in Gimp (or Photoshop) to jazz them up a little.

3. Be specific about your topic

We all know the internet has opened up a whole new ocean of information, so making our content stand out from the rest is much harder than it used to be. General overview articles that cover multiple topics rarely do that well, in my experience. Those that do tend to be weighted towards the larger websites who have large social klout.

For the average website owner, writing about one topic in greater detail (or covering another angle) is the safer route. This way you’re more likely to be able to cover areas that are less covered by other content already out there.

4. Be Controversial

Instead of always following the crowd, writing a controversial piece will normally stand out amongst the mine field of replicated content. A word of warning, however, is that your opinion or justification(s) must have substance. If your argument is weak, then you can expect to meet some resistance.

A useful method of weighing up your argument is to discuss it with a couple of friends (with sufficient knowledge of the topic) to see what questions or counter-arguments arise. I think having two friends as a minimum is important, because it reduces the risk of one person dominating the discussion in their favour.

I also like to keep an eye out in newspapers for any controversial stories. Normally a journalist will give a good account of their argument with sufficient evidence to at least create a discussion. These can be a good way of learning the structure of a controversial piece of content.

 

How do you make your content more shareable? And what puts you off (e.g. too many ads) from sharing content?