6 Tips on Writing Popular Content that Sticks

Together with in-person events and webinars, blogging is perceived as one of the most effective content marketing tactics in practice by marketers. In fact, blogging has increased steadily for most businesses over the past few years because it offers a range of benefits, including:

Unfortunately, many marketers don’t know how to make their content go viral. Of course, the first step to getting people to share your content widely is writing compelling articles. You should consider your audience, and then center the topic of your article on the reader – not yourself, ads, or anything else. Consider the needs, wants, dreams, and hopes of the reader, and then choose a topic that addresses those issues.

People read web content to obtain real solutions to their concerns. Welcome them to your website with fresh and entertaining content that offers:

Information

Your content should satisfy the need of the public to be informed on a product, topic, or issue

Education

Some audiences are mostly interested in learning something new in a certain topic

News

Some readers just want to stay up-to-date in certain fields/industries

Debate

Some readers enjoy challenging opinions, and like to dialogue, debate or discuss issues

Entertainment

People are increasingly relying on content for gossip, laughs, or fun conversations

Community

You can tap into an audience that wants to connect and belong, usually with little interest on the topic of discussion

There are many other ways that content can be useful depending on its target audience. But once you have crafted a useful and informative article, there are a number of things you should do to increase its reach. Here are some ideas to make your content popular:

1 Long-form content

A common misconception about the length of your content is that it should be short and brief to appeal to mobile device users who have short attention spans. However, studies suggest that the opposite is, in fact, true.

Research shows that long-form content is usually shared more compared to short-form content. The study found that articles with 3,000 – 10,000 words got more shares than those with 1,000 – 3,000 words and considerably more than articles with less than 1,000 words. So, the longer your content, the higher the chances of getting more shares.

However, the vast majority of content found online has less than 1,000 words. This implies that many copywriters/marketers are not willing to create well-research articles filled with valuable information.

With a little time and effort, you can easily make your content more popular since there is probably very little long-form content to compete within your niche.

But how can people prefer longer content over summarized posts? While people like to share cute photos and funny memes, they also like to share valuable, informative, long-form content. Create content with over 2,000 words per post to easily stand out.

2 Make the content scannable

If you are going to write a 2,000+ article, it is highly unlikely that mobile device users will be able to go through all of it, considering they have an average attention span of 96 seconds. It can be just as hard to read a long and informative article on a desktop without taking a break.

Studies suggest that most people reading online do so by scanning the page for headings, individual words or phrases, and any other visual cues. They also read about 25 percent slower on a screen than on paper because it’s tiring. So, it is critical that you make your content scannable.

There are many tactics that content creators employ to make posts easier to read, including:

Lists

Posts with numbered or bullet point lists usually get more links than similar length posts in essay-format. Lists provide an organized way to put your points across.

Formatting

The use of capitals, bold, italics, color, and underlining help to draw the attention of the reader to key points. They help to emphasize the main points, which is particularly important for readers looking for something specific.

Headings and sub-headings

These large and bold words act as visual cues, informing the reader of different sections of the content and providing seamless flow.

Images

Research shows that the readers are more likely to scan an article to the bottom if it contains pictures. Place images cleverly next to your main points, especially when they help to explain the content.

Borders or blockquotes

Using boxes around the main points and quotes can also draw the attention of readers.

Space

Create short paragraphs that are nicely spaced to prevent the reader from feeling overwhelmed and losing concentration.
Don’t bury key points: Rather than burying key points deep within paragraphs of content, it is better to put your message across up front and then expand on it later.

Stick to one idea per post

Avoid introducing too many new ideas in a single post as putting across a lot of information at once can overwhelm the reader.

If you don’t make your posts easy to scan, whether short-form or long-form, you risk losing visitors to another blog with better organization.

3 Use Titles/headlines effectively

So once you have a useful topic, develop a title to help you create an outline for the post. However, you should adjust the title after you have finished writing the post in order to crystallize the main points in the headline.

Those few words in your headline are the most important in your post because they:

Draw attention in search engine results pages: Type any word in your favorite search engine and see the plethora of results that show up in a split second. But the information accompanying any link in the SERPs is usually minimal: a title, short excerpt, and URL. The most dominant one is the title, which means that using a good and relevant title will not only get your content to show up in SERPs, but also get visitors to your site.
Draw the attention of RSS readers: Titles also help to grab the attention of readers who rely on RSS to get the latest articles on topics of interest.

There are many tactics that top content marketers use to make their titles stand out, including keeping them short, simple, and easy to understand; using words that evoke controversy or unusual claims; addressing a specific need using “how to” or “best/top” lists; and using popular keywords.

4 Be creative and add new dimensions to your blog

With content being created nearly every second – blog article, video, podcast, webinar, etc., – on nearly every topic you can think of, it can be hard for content creators to build content that truly stands out.

In order to distinguish yourself from the rest, it is important that you first research your competitors. Visit their websites and blogs to see what topics they have, as well as how they’re presenting it. You can then choose to present your content in a similar manner, or do it differently – perhaps writing in a unique voice, focusing on a sub-niche, or writing in a different genre (news vs. opinion type).

You can also try starting new conversations as opposed to simply reporting or responding to conversations started by others; linking to the same site less often, like once every two weeks; wait one week before publishing your thoughts on trending topics; and interact with various forms of information (books, magazines, face-to-face discussions, etc.) for inspiration on fresh topics.

5 Leverage third-party data and expand on it

This is the kind of data you find on online publications, industry blogs, online courses, etc. The data is not based on your own studies or research, though you need to read widely and visit multiple sources to find and verify the data or statistics.

Reports indicate that about 56 percent of marketers find it hard to find good content in their respective niches, which is why they opt to curate content.

Instead of curating, you can identify the topics that people in your niche seem most interested in, and then find results from research studies, experiments, projects, etc. to create content around real data. This is particularly important when you are a new business. Not only can Google penalize you for duplicating content based on the “freshness factor”, but you also need to convince your audience that they can trust you.

So, identify the topics that your market is interested in, find a reputable brand with striking statistics, and create content around the data. You could record a podcast, write an article, create a Slideshare presentation, do a video, or even create an eBook to add value to your audience.

6 Content promotion

Writing engaging content is just the first step. Once you publish, there are two crucial steps that follow: promoting the content, and leveraging it for additional content marketing initiatives. If you believe that your content is worth sharing, both activities will make sure that you have a steady and extensively read volume of content that positions your organization as an industry leader.

When you publish great content, the only people who know that it exists are you and your RSS subscribers. After search engine robots pick up your article, it will then become visible among thousands of other web pages with similar content, or at least addressing the same topics as you. So even if your article is exceptional, it can take a while for the search engines and subscribers/followers to boost your organic volume.

This is why every content marketer needs a good strategy for targeted promotion to ensure that every piece of content published is promptly noticed by top influencers and the target audience. Here are some content promotion tactics to get your content noticed:

SEO / keyword integration

Identify the main topics covered in your piece and use them to pick out the most popular search items and their variations in wording and phrasing using the Google Adwords’ free keyword suggestion tool. Then, integrate these popular keywords in your post title, meta description, tags, and content.

Syndication

RSS feeds provide the simplest form of syndication as they allow you to automatically feed new content to multiple platforms, including social networking sites. So, when you plug your RSS feed URL in your social networking profile, publishing your new post in your blog also automatically “pushes” the same content to those sites. This can save you a lot of time compared to publishing manually on different platforms, plus it expands your reach.

Shortening your post’s URL

Previously only applied to Twitter, many URL shortening services today also offer analytics, which significantly boosts your reach on social sites when combined with status updates.

Content teasers on other websites

Most online forums and social networking platforms permit content promotion provided it’s meaningful and relevant to the community. Consider writing a compelling headline for your forum post title (Facebook group, LinkedIn Answers or group forums, niche industry forums), followed by an insightful commentary and the shortened URL to engage your followers.

There are many other tactics you can use to promote your content, including:

Conclusion