Whether you operate an ecommerce site, a service business with locations in every state or just a simple blog, one of the keys to driving the success of your business is publishing website content that attracts readers and gets shared.
Creating viral blog content on a regular basis can push tons of traffic to your website, turn readers into diehard fans and generate revenue around the clock.
So how do you create content that your readers love and share? Below are five tips for writing copy that gets people’s attention and gets shared on social media.
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Write for Humans -- Not Search Engines
There are a lot of SEO “experts” out there who are still pushing outdated blackhat methods, spinning blog content and producing low-quality drivel from which no human being can derive any value. They just throw a bunch of keyword-stuffed garbage text on a blog post, hit publish and hope that someone will come and click on their ads and product links.
Those techniques stopped working a long time ago, and they’ll only get your website penalized today.
Instead, invest in high-quality web copy by professional writers and industry experts that customers will actually want to read. Nobody shares mindless drivel written by software programs, but people love to share high-quality articles that speak to their needs and help them in some way.
So write that kind of content.
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Create Attention-Grabbing Headlines
Nobody will share your blog posts if they don’t first read them, and nobody will click on your emails and search results if the headlines don’t grab their attention and entice them to click.
There are many
factors that make content go viral, but the most effective ones include headlines that peak the reader’s curiosity, that ask a question that begs to be answered and that hint at the solution that lies on the other side of the click.
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Format the Text for Easy Readability
Web surfers’ attention spans are at an
all-time low, but many content writers seem to have not yet received the message and are publishing walls of text that lull the eyes to sleep.
To keep your reader’s attention, break up your written content into small sentences and paragraphs with plenty of white space in-between. Make use of bullet points, italics and even bold text if that helps. And be sure to break things up with frequent use of photos, graphics and video content too.
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Write List Articles Readers Love
A lot of people in the blogging world seem to detest list articles, but statistics show over and over again that listicles with numbered titles get more clicks, more views and more shares that many other types of content.
You don’t have to use listicles exclusively, but they should make up a substantial part of your content marketing strategy.
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Promote Your Post to Get Traffic
When your website is still relatively new or hasn’t established a lot of authority in the search results, it can be difficult to get your blog posts to go viral. The content might be very good -- the kind that people will share like crazy -- but nobody knows about it yet.
This is where promotion makes all the difference. When publishing a new blog post, be sure to share them across your social channels, in emails and in comments on other websites’ articles and forum posts.
It can take a lot of work to build traffic levels at first, but it’s a necessary part of the process. How can you expect readers to share your posts when you aren’t really sharing them yourself?
To get even more of a traffic boost, you should be publishing guest posts on blogs and media sites in your industry.
If you don’t know where to start with guest posting, there are professional
Link Building Services that can handle some or even all of the process for you -- everything from keyword research and content creation to outreach and guest publishing.
Getting readers to share your content and help it go viral is more difficult than ever, thanks to the flood of content and competition in the online marketplace. But following these time-tested content creation and promotion strategies is the best way to ensure that you get the traffic and conversions that your business needs.
Image Credits:
Readers from
TierneyMJ/Shutterstock
