Providing shareable content can be a key part of your overall online business growth strategy. It’s not just the obvious content, like blogs and social media posts, that can kick off a sharing trend. From savvy product descriptions (think the reviews that accompany many Amazon descriptions) to an “About Us” section that features first-person narratives from thought leaders involved in your company, ask yourself what’s “shareable” about your business. It doesn’t matter if you’re a laundry startup or an enterprise—you need people to be sharing your content.
However, what you want to be shareable and what actually is shareable often don’t mingle much. You probably want people sharing information about that upcoming event where you’ll be the keynote speaker, but what they want to share are memes and infographics. Unfortunately, you can’t “make” anyone share your content. You can, however, give people what they want and make it easy to share.
That’s the secret of shareable content. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
1. Shorter is better
That might not be true in the world of modeling, but it nearly always rings true with content—especially online. People's attention spans are not inspiring these days. Artist Ani DiFranco said it best with, “Some say goldfish have no memory, I guess their lives are much like mine. And the little plastic castle is a surprise every time.” You need to be giving your audience that plastic castle with every piece of content: Miniature, striking and pleasing.
2. Appeal to as many people as possible
However, at the same time, address your niche. If you own a local restaurant specializing in the locavore movement, you probably won’t be blogging about the benefits of meditation (even if that’s majorly trending as part of New Year’s resolutions). However, as long as you can keep your content relevant without it seeming forced, feel free to explore other markets with the occasional blog post or Facebook comment.
3. Share and share alike
Make sure you share your own content—that’s a huge oversight! If you recently were a guest blogger on a complementary site, tell people in your newsletter, on your website, etc. When you’re proud of your company, that trickles down to your employees, investors and customers. A little showing off never hurt anyone, as long as you also practice humility. Everything in moderation.
4. Let them push your buttons
In the right way, of course! People need to see that it’s easy to share your posting on social media, their blog, email, or whatever other avenue you prefer. However, don’t just add the option to share on every possible platform under the sun. You should know, via analytics, where your audience is and cater to those platforms. Too many buttons can be overwhelming and can even become white noise (and thus invisible to your audience).
5. Genuinely ask for feedback
Shareable content is even better if you’re asking for feedback, opinions, or stories from your readers. For example, maybe you recently blogged about how many of your chiropractic patients were unaware that seeing this specialist regularly (not just post-accident) can be beneficial to overall health. Asking your audience about misconceptions they’ve heard about or experienced can be a great way to kickstart a conversation.
Shareable content speaks to people. It makes them want to spread the word, whether it’s to educate, entertain, or inform their friends and family. This isn’t a platform for you to sell, but an avenue for engagement.