10 Secrets to Making Your Content Famous and Getting Lots of Share in Social Media
Rabu, 27 Desember 2017
This article was written by
Hanley Wing, founder of Buzzsumo.com. He analyzed the amount of social share on
100 million articles that exist throughout the website. In this research, he
took some learning why there are some articles that generate social share in
large numbers.
10 Secrets to Making Your Content Famous and Getting Lots of Share in Social Media:
1. Long content gets more
share than short form.
We all certainly already
know how many people are consuming content through their mobile device. It
shows that we have to write short and short articles to satisfy their
attention, is not it?
From the analysis data on
the top 10 percent of the most shared articles, this research shows the
opposite. On average, long content gets more share than short content.
If you look at the graph
below, the longer the content, the more the number of shares, with the word
number 3000-10000 can get the average share amount up to 8859 times. Not
surprisingly, there is a lot of short content that has been written. How much
short content is there? There is 16 times more content with words that are less
than 1000 than content with more than 2000 words.
What does this mean? This
tells us that most people do not want to create deep content with clear
information based on research. They do not want to do the things that take time
and energy. This means there are great opportunities for those of you who want
to do it because there are not many long content creators who will compete with
you.
This research is also
supported by an article in the NY Times about the most content being emailed byemail.
The longer the article, the more people will share it in the email.
The fact is people are happy
to share cute cat pictures and memes, but they also want to share what
challenges their intellect, that is long content. It would be better if you
spend time writing a long cool article instead of writing many short articles.
Little rival. It should be
easier to withstand the rush of short articles.
Primary Key: write an
article at least 2000 words
2. At least insert one
picture in your writing to increase share on Facebook.
We've all been listening to
experts who say that images can improve engagement visually, but that can only
be applied to Facebook, right? What about the actual written content?
This time, we analyze all
the articles we crawl on BuzzSumo to compare the average share amount on
Facebook from content that is more than one image with no image content.
As you can see, the amount
of content shared with images is twice as much as that of no content, which is
why the importance of visual elements in your content. Keep in mind that we do
not discuss the quality of images, but the presence of images in the content.
What about the social meta
tags for Facebook? We're curious if the person implementing this tag (by
displaying images) gets more Facebook share or not. We hope this is true, but
we want to see how dramatic the changes will be. For those of you who do not
know yet, if you want Facebook to display images, you need to implement this
meta tag in the <head> section of your article by adding this tag:
<meta property =
"og: image" content = "http://example.com/image.jpg" />
As you can see, the article
that implements the meta image display tags generates Facebook share three
times more than those who do not.
Primary key: Implement
social meta tags and add a photo to every post! Images/photos will determine
what readers see before they even visit the article.
3. Enter at least one
picture in Twitter post to increase share
Perhaps this is not
surprising, just as above. Posts with image tags work better on Twitter than
those who do not use them:
Primary key: adding images
to your content and posting on Twitter will generate more share!
4. Create content that is
inspiring, funny or entertaining. Fishing side of narcissistic people.
We analyze the top 10 most
shared articles on the website and map them into emotion, such as content that
is relaxed, sad, angry, entertaining, funny, etc.
As you can see, the three
most famous emotional content are:
Content that inspires (25%)
Funny
content and make laugh (17%)
And
entertaining content (15%)
Conversely, the less-known
emotion is sadness and anger, which amounts to 7%.
* Note that amused by laugh
because funnily is different.
Why do people love to share
amazing things, make them laugh and be comforted? We have no scientific reason
for this, but the New York Times has been researching intensively in recent
years. They interviewed 2500 people to determine their main reason for sharing
stories online.
This is the main reason:
To
deliver valuable and entertaining content to others
To
define themselves to others (explaining others a bit about their identity)
To
grow relationships with others
To
fulfill the desire of oneself to feel more involved in the development of this
world
To spread the content
because they care
Amazing and funny content
must meet the first three reasons. Sharing entertaining content brings value to
our friends, showing others that we have great tastes, and provoking
conversations and reactions.
People also share content on
the grounds because of themselves, like narcissists.
In fact, 8 of the 10
most-shared articles in 8 months are quizzes (7 from BuzzFeed, 1 from NYTimes).
Why quiz? Because when to share the results of our quiz, it will show our
identity and ego. Others will learn who we are, what we value, and our tastes.
Try to remember the last time you shared the quiz. Do you really think that 90%
of your Facebook friends care about this? No, but some people will know how
cool you are. Similar to this case, content sharing based on opinions about
things that are heating up, like a gay marriage will tell people who you are on
whose side.
For reference, here are 6 of
the 10 most-shared articles in the last 8 months, with the "What Career
Should You Actually Have" quiz being in position 1.
Primary key:
Make entertaining content,
never boring your friends.
The quiz turned out to be
effective
Content that provokes
opinions, controversial opinions can break up a party, but the person who
agrees with you will usually share your content.
5. People usually like to
share lists as well as infographic
We also see what content
formats people like to share. So we divided each article in our analysis into
six types:
List
Infographic
How-To Articles
"What" article (an
article whose title begins with the word "What")
The article "Why"
(article whose title begins with the word "Why")
Video
Here's a graph we found:
This may be obvious to some
people, but list and infographic content get above average share counts
compared to others.
And even more surprising,
the How-To and video articles get less share than other articles.
There are many possible
reasons why articles that contain lists get lots of shares. The list article
gives readers opinions that match what they expect (eg 10 ways of doing
things). This article is more readable.
In similar cases,
infographic easy readers to digest large amounts of information visually with
an attractive appearance. So make sure your content has lots of pictures and
graphics, so readers do not feel intimidated by the sheer amount of text.
The main key: If you write
long content, do not forget to make it easier for people to read it, not filled
with text only. You can do this by listing, but if you do not want to make a
list, make sure your paragraphs are readable and use sub-headlines and bullet
points.
6. 10 is a magic number for
the content that contains the list
This is not surprising
anymore: the list with a total of 10 get more share than others, usually can
reach 10,621 amount of social share. A list of content with a total of 10
pieces usually gets four times more social share than a list with a total of
23, 16, and 24.
Primary key: If you create a
list of content, you should create a total of 10 only.
7. People usually like to
share content that looks trustworthy
We are curious to see if
trust plays a role at the content share level. So we compare the average social
share for articles without bio and articles with bio.
And it turns out that trust
plays a big role in Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, as you can see in the graph
below.
However, trust does not seem
to make a difference on Facebook. Articles with bio only have 0.10% more social
share than without bio articles. The obvious difference is in Google+, articles
with a bio have 42% more social share than without bio.
Trust does not play a major
role on Facebook because we usually share different types of content on
different social networks. Usually, we share entertaining and funny content on
Facebook with our close friends.
But for Twitter, LinkedIn,
and Google+, some of our followers and friends are people we know
professionally. So we tend to prefer to share content from sources that can be
trusted.
The main key: do not forget
to include a bio at the beginning of each article, and bio at the end of the
article to make your content look more trustworthy.
8. Find additional
influencers to share your articles to experience multiplier effects.
Not everyone who shares the
article is the same. For example, if Oprah or Tim Ferriss or any other
Indonesian artist share your article with their followers, this will result in
more retweet / like than ordinary people who do it.
But can we measure the
effect? Forget Oprah and Tim Ferriss. What if someone more influential than the
average person shares your content? How many will more people share your
article? Can we predict it?
We compare the number of
social share articles that do not have influencers with content that has
influencers.
To do so, we define an
influencer as someone whose tweets are retweeted twice the number of tweets.
For example, if you tweet 100 times, and there are 200 people who retweet your
tweets, the average retweet is twice.
As you can see in the graph
below, just by having one influential person, the amount of your content share
is up 31.8%. Having three influential people can increase your share of content
share to two-fold. And having five influential people can increase your total
share of content by up to four times.
Great is it, but how to get
influencers to share your content without relying on luck?
To do so can you start by
working in reverse. Instead of writing content first, better find content that
is similar to what you want to write, and find all the influencers who share
the article. Then start building relationships with them before you publish
your content.
For example, suppose you
want to write an article about "conversion optimization". By using
BuzzSumo, you can find the most-zipped articles about conversion optimization
in the last six months using Top Content Search.
You can see it in the
picture below.
The first result has a total
share of 2039, and it comes from conversionxl.com. You can see who's sharing
this article by clicking on the "View Sharers" button. There you will
see a list of people who share on Twitter, compiled based on the number of
retweets. In other words, arranged according to their level of influence.
Here's the result:
There are some things that
are useful to you there, namely the number of their follower and their reply
ratio (percentage of twit reply to someone). Although the number of followers
is a metric that is usually used to measure influence, the follower can be
forged. But the average number of retweets is hard to fake.
You may have to do this in
more than one article to collect the list of influencers you want to share your
content with, but once you have a list you should familiarize them and include
them in your content in the following ways:
Ask the quote you will use
in your article
Ask questions to get
feedback on an opinion
Provide links to articles
they write in your articles
People love to share the
things they are involved in, even if they are not directly involved. If you can
do so, chances are they will share your article with their follower after you
publish it.
Interviewing people can also
be a great way to engage them. In BuzzSumo, our most widely shared articles are
500+. We interviewed more than
Interviewing people can also
be a great way to engage them. In BuzzSumo, our most widely shared articles are
500+. We interviewed more than 40 people in the SEO industry and they share the
article with their acquaintances or followers. Here's an example.
The main key: asking the
influencer to share your content can increase the number of shares.
9. Promote your old content
regularly.
The next thing we analyze is
the percentage of social share that declines after you publish your article for
three days. Most people will share your article for the first few days, then
the share will decrease, but how much?
The result is enough to make
this heart shake. After three days, across all social networks, share
subscriptions declined by at least 96% for the next four days, with the biggest
drop on Facebook, and followed by G + / Pinterest.
Facebook: down 98.9%
Twitter: down 97.4%
LinkedIn: decreased 97.34%
G +: decreased 96.7%
Pinterest: decreased 96.7%
After a week, the number of
shares for the next three weeks declined by at least 86% from the first week,
with the biggest decline going on Twitter, and followed by LinkedIn.
Twitter: down 92.1%
G +: decreased by 90%
Facebook: down 89%
Pinterest: decreased 86%
LinkedIn: decreased 82%
This is inevitable, is not
it? We analyze this weirdness in getting more shares articles after a week has
passed.
One of the articles came
from Evernote which was published on March 10 that only gets 23 shares on
Facebook after a week. However, after a month, this article gets a share of
181, up 686% after three days.
After digging deeper, we
know the cause, they re-promote their article on Facebook 11 days after they
publish it. Here's the proof:
We do not have any exact
data in determining a suitable time to wait before re-promoting the article
again, but at least a week is a good time to start. Evernote published his
article on Monday and promoted it again on Friday next week.
Of course, this prerequisite
is for timeless content (useful content forever) because it can be shared and
re-promoted at any time after you publish it.
But what if this old article
is not an enduring article? There is still a way to promote your old article if
it announces the upcoming event. For example, we found an infographic about an
influencer meeting at SMWW (a social media marketing conference) that generated
72 Twitter share after a week but rose to 487 after a month. What's their
secret?
Infographic was first
published on March 10 and was shared again on Twitter on the day of the event:
March 28th. The number of shares rose drastically on Twitter.
Primary key: Do not let your
content be famous only in the early days! Promote it back at least a week
later. Find your old content that talks about an upcoming event and resume it
during the event.
10. The best overall day to
publish content is Tuesday
The day you twist to publish
your content also affects the number of shares. See chart below:
You can see clearly which
day generates a lot of shares. Usually, it is Tuesday or Monday, depending on
their respective social networks:
Best day overall: Tuesday
Best day for FB: Tuesday
Best day for G +: Tuesday
The best day for Twitter:
Tuesday
The best day for Linkedin:
Monday
Best day for Pinterest:
Monday
Conclusion
1. Provide content that is
inspiring, funny and entertaining
2. Fishing side of narcissistic
people (like quiz in Buzzfeed)
3. Long content lacks
competition and can generate more shares
4. Lists and infographics
usually generate more shares
5. Make sure your articles can
be trusted, there is a bio at the beginning of the article and make sure your
logo and design professional
6. Combine text with visually
appealing elements
7. Implement social metadata
like Facebook preview image or thumbnail
8. Approach the influencer
before you write the content
9. Promote your article a week
after it's published
10. Tuesday is the best day to
publish and promote content
Of course, some things
depend on their respective niche. If your target is the person who likes the
cute cat image, of course, the long content becomes useless.