Marketing is, by its very nature, an industry that loves buzzwords and jargon. Some popular ones right now include “authentic,” “brand advocacy,” and of course “shareable.” We focus so much on making content shareable.
Make sure your content is formatted for social media. Make sure it’s not too long (so people will read it). Make it a slideshow. Make it a bulleted list. Put a cat picture in it. People love cat pictures. Did you see all of those shares Brand X got with their bulleted list of cat pictures?
Shareability is incredibly important. Let’s get that straight. Content is no good if no one sees it. However, problems arise when content producers think about shareability first and quality second. When you produce content, the absolute most important thing is making that content great. Once you’ve created something great, then figure out how to optimize it for shareability. If one of the optimization steps means watering down the quality of your content, don’t take that step. Always err on the side of telling the story you want to tell in the way you want to tell it, even if it doesn’t fall into “best practices.”
Your process should look like this:
- Decide what kind of story you want to tell.
- Once you know what your content story is, decide on the best format for your content. Is it an article? A video? A list of some kind?
- Create your content.
- Make it shareable.
See the truth of the matter is that #1 thing that will make people share your content is making high-quality content. With few exceptions, the sort of content that gets shared on social media is really well-made. It’s content that makes people laugh, or tear up, or teaches them something that they wanted to know. If your content doesn’t do at least one of those things, all of the bullet points and social buttons in the world won’t get people to share it.
One great way to assure you have high quality content is to make it yourself. Get some tips for marketers from the Maker Movement here.
