Companies of all size—from small businesses to Fortune 100 corporations—are starting to take their content creation and marketing seriously. Whether that's because they know quality content is part of Google's algorithm for SEO or because they've heard that content marketing is "in" right now doesn't matter. The important thing is that businesses today are mindful of creating content as part of their marketing strategy. The only problem is that quality often times takes a backseat to quality, and in today's world of content overload, that's not a good thing.
Once your content starts to take a dip in quality, you'll likely see that reflected in the number of content shares you receive through social media as well as in the overall engagement and activity you receive from your readers. To get those shares back, you need to go back to the drawing board and revamp your content strategy.
Use this post as a guide to create content that your influencers and audience actually wants to absorb and share with their friends, family, fans and followers.
Use Social Sharing Icons
If you want people to share your content, you need to make it easy for them to do so.
If you expect users to copy and paste a link to your blog, log into their social profiles, and create their own post just to share your content, then you're out of touch with the digital age that's upon us. We now live in a world where if you don't capture a user's attention within three seconds they're gone.
So with that being said, each piece of content you create—from blogs to infographics—should have social sharing buttons that automatically help your readers and influencers easily share your content on their social networks. Content Management Systems like WordPress and Drupal have plugins that make this process extremely easy for your business to deploy.
Tag Them In Your Post
Your influencers are busy, so they don't have time to consistently check your blog and social networks to see if you've released new content.
That's why you need to alert them when you do.
This is an especially popular tactic on Twitter because you don't necessarily need to be following someone to @mention them in a tweet. If you've got a piece of content that you think a particular influencer or customer would appreciate, simply tag them in your post and alert them of the content. (Example: .@InfluencerA thought you'd appreciate this post on content influencers: link).
It's as simple as that.
Create Great, Original Content
It sounds obvious, but creating great content is really what drives influencers to share and engage with your content. Think about all of the content pieces you absorb each week—now think about how quickly you bounce from that content once you realize it's the third time you've read about that subject that week.
Coming up with content topics isn't always the easiest part of the job, but if you want to really drive your content marketing, you need to take the time to research and craft original content that people actually want to read. Another great way to get people to interact with your content is to offer them something, like a discount code or free eBook download. All in all, it boils down to what type of value you're bringing through your content, and if your influencers feel that it will bring value to their network of fans and followers by sharing the content.
Additionally, it's important to remember that content doesn't always have to be 1,000 word blogs—it's video on YouTube or Vimeo, and it's photos, images and infographics.
Now, get out there and start creating content that people will want to share with their networks.
