If you want your small business content to go viral, consider how popular cats are on the Internet. Cats just may hold the secret to what makes content shareable on social networks. In the article “Why Do Cats Run the Internet? A Scientific Explanation,” author Perry Stein explains that Western culture always has had a fascination with cats dating back to the ninth century. As a result, the Internet has exploited an interest that is already there.
Jonah Berger, professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business, in a recent interview with SmartPlanet about what goes viral, also says about reader interest, “If people don’t find something at least moderately interesting themselves, they are less likely to share it.”
So how do you know what content is of interest to your audiences? You need to pay attention. Listen to what your followers are telling you and analyze how they interact with your content. The more likes, comments and shares you get indicates what resonates with your small business audiences.
Content types that are highly shareable
While the subject matter of your small business content has to be of interest to audiences; there are some types of content that have proven to be “highly shareable.” Keep these in mind as you develop your content strategy.
News: Become a source of breaking news about your industry or marketplace to gain the attention and shares of your audience. Add value by offering your opinion or additional background on the situation.
Video and images: A picture is worth a thousand words and potentially even more shares if it’s entertaining, fascinating or informative. Make it more compelling with some commentary and text. Video enables you to communicate something more powerfully than you might be able to do with words.
How to guides and lists: How-to-guides and lists are popular for sharing. They are easier to digest than long blocks of text and readily can answer questions about how to resolve a problem.
Infographics: Infographics do a great job of clearly conveying topics that rely a lot on data. They are generally visually engaging and colorful and can be very impactful to validate blog or website content. As long as you have data for backup; you can create an Infographic on any topic.
SlideShare presentations: You can turn most any presentation you’ve already created for a meeting, conference or your own small business event into a SlideShare presentation. You’ll need to open a SlideShare account. Once you do, upload your SlideShare and easily share it across your social channels.
Interesting content can be packaged in a variety of forms. Just be sure what you are offering is relevant and and engaging to your audience – like cats.