You create good content: no, fantastic content. However, sometimes it just sits there like it’s on vacation, lounging around your blog with a fruity drink in hand. You want your content to work for you immediately and long after you post it. Social media shares invite your blog posts to the party, and you can watch your words dance across the internet one Twitter retweet or Facebook share at a time. How do you get there? Here’s what statistics say about writing content that is ready to go viral.
It’s All Right to Create Longer Content
While some bloggers have made their reputations on pithy blog posts that stand out from the crowd, for the most part, the pieces that receive the most social shares are longer. According to MarketingProfs, blog posts that are between 1200 and 1400 words receive the most social shares.
What does this tell you as a blogger? Thoughtful, well-written pieces matter. You can create bite-sized content, but chances are it’s your longer-form content that inspires people and lead them to think deeply and share.
Write at a Higher Level
You want to make a point, but you don’t need to make it in the simplest way possible. To achieve the most shares, your post should be fairly difficult to read, with a 50-59 on the Flesch readability scale. This scale examines word length and sentence length. In this case, you want your writing to be a little more difficult but not too challenging: writing with very complex sentences and a preponderance of long words gets fewer social shares.
As a business blogger, this means that you shouldn’t be afraid to write in a more complex way. Yes, you want to speak to your audience, but your audience wants to learn something from a respected source. By using more complex language and sentence structure, you position yourself as an educated resource.
Longer and somewhat complex posts get the most shares.
Introduce Yourself Thoroughly, But Not Too Thoroughly
Insurance. Vacations. Children. Why You Need Insurance When You’re Going on Vacation With Children: A Personal Story. If you have a blog post title that’s just one word, your readers don’t necessarily get hooked into your content. Your post titles should have enough description to get your readers excited but not so much description that they’re like reading the post itself. According to MarketingProfs,
Brand blog posts with seven words in their titles receive the most social shares (412), on average. Posts with extremely short or long titles receive the fewest social shares.
Tell a Story or Answer a Question
When it comes to titles, punctuation matters as well. If you’re excited about your blog, you may be tempted to add those often-overused exclamation marks. Don’t bother! Why? As you can see, asking a question makes your readers more intrigued and more likely to click on your post to find the answer. If they’ve searched for the same question and gotten to your website, it’s like you’re speaking directly to them with the answer. People don’t generally search for content that contains exclamation points. Telling a story with a quote also helps draw in your readers. Blog titles containing punctuation marks get some of the strongest rankings.
You’re working to build your business blog. Media Shower can help. We know content, and we can help you create the blog posts that work for your business. Contact us today to get three free content ideas.