10 Proven Ways to Make Your Content Go Viral [Infographic]
Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy where businesses share information that is useful or valuable to their audience, with the goal of growing their business. It’s the goal of every marketer to have their content go viral: to be shared and reshared thousands and even millions of times. Content marketing is used by SEO, digital marketing and PR agencies to help their clients grow their online visibility and their business. What makes content go viral – to be shared and reshared? The team at Buzzsumo analyzed more than 100 million articles to understand why content goes viral. Here are 10 proven strategies to help your content go viral.
10. Be transparent and get way more shares
- Google+ articles with a byline/bio have 42% more social shares.
Take Away: Having an author byline increased shares on every major social platform, except Facebook.
9. Get top influencers to share your content
- 1 influential person’s share got 32% more shares.
- When 3 influential people shared a post, social shares doubled.
- When 5 influential people shared a post, social shares quadrupled.
Take Away: Get social influencers to share your posts by creating content about them, awesome things they’ve done, or are doing.
8. Repost your content to get way more shares
- You can double, triple and even quadruple shares by reposting your content after about 1 week.
Take Away: Most social media sites display content like stock tickers. So, repost that content after about 1 week and get way more shares.
7. Make your articles visual by turning them into infographics
- List posts –> most shares
- Infographics –> 2nd most shares
Take Away: List posts work best because numbers stand out in titles, which impacts CTR; and a list makes information easy to absorb. So, be strategic, create visual infographics combined with lists.
6. Quizzes feed egos, and humans love to feel important
- Quizzes are hot right now! In fact, of the 10 most shared articles, 8 of them were quizzes.
Take Away: Be creative and feed people’s narcissistic side. There are plenty of free quiz makers online. Take advantage!
5. Cute and happy articles get more shares
- Awe, so cute –> 25% of shares
- LOL –> 17% of shares
- Entertaining –> 15% of shares (articles, quizzes, etc.)
Take Away: Make your friends and followers laugh and smile. People don’t like sharing sad content.
4. Always add at least 1 image to every article you post
- on average twice as many people share posts with at least one image.
Take Away: Images grab people’s attention way more than text. So, use images as often as possible in posts.
3. List articles get way more shares than other articles
- 1st place Winner –> lists with 10 items
- 2nd place –> lists with 23 items
- 3rd place –> lists with 16 items
- 4th place –> lists with 24 items
Take Away: List posts make it easy to absorb information. Just make share you choose the most sharable list size.
2. Post your content on the right days of the week
- Monday –> Pinterest, LinkedIn
- Tuesday –> Facebook, Google +, Twitter (in general, Tuesday is the best day to post)
Take Away: Post content early in the workweek to get more shares. However, the best overall day to post content is Tuesday.
1. Longer articles get almost double the shares
- 3,000 to 10,000 words –>
- Under 1000 words –>