Write Content That Inspires Links and Shares
While not every blog post will be a long, deep, highly sharable piece of content, it is important to spice up your content with bullet points, video, and/or images to make it more engaging. Some posts can be fairly basic, but in general, you should at least use an image or two to make them come alive. When you can tweak images to add text to them or make them more original, it sets you apart even further. Having a particular visual style plus an appealing writing style, appropriate tone, evident passion, and the right theme can make your blog go from good to great.
Feeling versus Thinking in Content Creation
Sometimes a post has all the facts and figures it needs to be adequate, but falls short of being inspiring because it doesn’t leave the reader with a strong feeling. Keep in mind that while providing details and statistics can be great, tapping into readers’ emotions as well can create rabid fans.
What Makes an Article Link-Worthy?
What makes a blog more likely to get links and shares? Moz published three blog posts on what makes a link-worthy blog post. They looked at the following elements:
- Blog post title
- URL
- Types of media in the post (videos, images, lists, presentations)
- Number of links from root domains (via Linkscape API)
- Content of post (no comments or other text on site)
- Number of words
- Number of “thumbs up”
- Number of comments
- Category
- Author
Many factors go into creating a linkable post, but what stands out is the variety of media you use. Below is a list of the types of media that work well when writing both basic weekly posts and those posts you do once a quarter that are intended to go viral. Moz lists these media types in descending order, from most beneficial to least in terms of creating links. (The same is likely true for social shares.) While this data was based on an Moz’s content, it seems to make sense for many sites. However, look at your own analytics to determine the type of posts that drive engagement, links, and shares on your own blog.
Leave a Comment!