Digital marketing is a strategy being increasingly employed by businesses at an incredible rate. Every day, about two million blog posts are published and shared on social media hundreds of millions of times. Putting out daily fresh content is only part of the battle. If you want your brand to grow, it’ll need both thought and effort. It is crucial to stand out from the crowd in order to grab the attention of consumers. The best way to do this is by creating content that is incredibly shareable. More shares mean more traffic, which at the end of the day, will boost your line.
What makes content more sharable? Well, in a fast-paced world, where people can be overwhelmed with information, it might make sense to create bite-sized content (articles of 600 words or less and 30-second videos). Such thinking is reinforced by the idea that as technology and media become more widespread, people’s attention spans decrease. Simple ideas with clear messages, such as infographics, provide audiences with what they need to know with minimal frills. Bite-sized content also can be easy to create and it funnels in more traffic day-to-day. This article hopes to show some of the ways you can create more bite-sized content for your company.
Brevity, or be brief
Try to be to the point, your audience only has so much time in the day, and you only have so much time to capture their attention. Be concise, and make your points clear as quickly as possible. Brevity encourages you to clearly think through what you want to mention in the copy. Conciseness coupled with a clear call-to-action is always sure to grab your potential customers/clients attention.
Front-load to grab attention
Front-loading is a technique that puts the most important or attention-grabbing elements first followed by supporting or explanatory information. The style is to write in consideration of the order of importance, with it starting high up front and diminishing as the piece goes on. Think of it as putting the key details and facts up first and leaving the nitty gritty and additional flavour text in the back.
Front-loading can often be very useful for bite-size content. For example, push notifications are restricted to 235 characters on iOS or 140 characters on Android. Front-loading the most important content in the first 70 characters could potentially improve the conversions from the content. After all, first impressions are often the most important, and if you can get them with a solid first impression, it is much likelier that they’ll finish reading your content.
Remember your tone
While it is easy to get absorbed in placing your logos on every piece of content you create, you risk losing sight of the audience. Ideally, you’d like to keep your content light, not in content, but in tone. Your audience won’t want to see your content and leave feeling more negatively than they did before. Keep your content light in tone, optimistic. Don’t lie to your audience or make promises you can’t keep, but you should be optimistic, or at the very least leave them feeling optimistic. Keeping it light requires you to create content that is cheerful, optimistic and hopeful.
Pay attention to the trends
Everybody wants to be a trendsetter, but there's nothing wrong with being a follower. Trending content, which covers topics people are talking about at the moment, is far more likely to be shared due to its immediate relevance. By creating content centered or related to these topics you would be entering a discussion being read by a large number of users, which naturally can generate shares.
How can you find out what is trending? Social media websites like Twitter and Facebook have sections dedicated to trending topics. It makes it easy for users to follow what's been going on lately. There are also social media tools and services available for purchase. These neatly display the different topics, which have been trending on which platforms, along with the number of shares.
Learn from your competitors
It may not be the most straightforward path, but one way to help in creating shareable content is by taking lessons from the successful content published by your competitors. If they have found something that works, it may likely have a similar reaction from your customer base. Anything their audience likes, yours might as well. It isn’t an unreasonable guess, though you should consider what you know of your customer/client demographics. Keeping track of your competitors can be a great way to gain insight on potential buyers.
Tracking your competitors doesn't have to be a full time job. Create a list of your top competitors and monitor their social media channels, so you are aware of where you're fighting for attention. Take a look at the content they've published over the past few months and note the topics and types of posts that received the most engagement from customers. Are they videos, lists or stories? If there's any perpetually lauded content that has been widely shared, consider taking the idea and making it your own.
Engage with your audience
Try being active online with your customer base and industry community. Interacting with them by either engaging in discussion or reacting to their comments can give you an idea of any burning questions they might have. Replying to e-mails, blog posts, Reddit threads, social media inquiries and Q&A sites like Quora can inspire all sorts of ideas.
Content ideas will come to you simply by reading what people have to say. You might learn about other perspectives you hadn't considered yet. Always read the comments. Your content should invite your audience/customers/clients to interact with you. A call to action, an invitation to have their questions answered, you want to engage with your audience and have them engage with you.
In conclusion
when creating content, it should be bite-sized and encourage sharing. To make it easily shareable, make it concise, front-load the important details, and keep the tone light. Paying attention to market trends as well as what works for your competitors can help you better refine your own marketing content. Also remember that engaging with your audience is one of the best ways to encourage proliferation of your content.
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