What Makes Content Shareable & Why It Matters for SEO

Not all content marketing practices yield equal results. In today's landscape of SEO and social media, shareability is one of the most important qualities for a content marketing campaign. So what makes content shareable and why does it matter?

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Date published
August 04, 2014 Categories

Social Media Sharing

Not all content marketing practices yield equal results. In today’s landscape of SEO and social media, shareability is one of the most important qualities for a content marketing campaign. So what makes content shareable and why does it matter?

Defining Shareability: Why Does it Matter?

Put simply, “shareability” is the potential of a given piece of content to be transmitted, or shared, by a third party. Usually this manifests as a reader sharing a piece of content on their personal social media profile for more people to see, but there are many similar forms of redistribution, and a piece of content’s “shareability” determines how likely it is for such instances to occur.

So why are shares so important for SEO and inbound traffic?

Bottom line: shareable content will do your work for you. Instead of posting links everywhere you can and trying to reach new audiences with cold opens, you can let your audience do all the promotion and link sharing for you. Shareability is the key that opens this door.

How to Make Your Content Shareable

“Shareability” isn’t typically thought of as quantifiable, but there are certain measurable properties of content that increase its propensity to be shared. Think about the types of content you see your friends posting to their timelines on Facebook, or the types of retweets you usually see; they share many similar characteristics, right?

Writing content with these characteristics is no guarantee of success. You are creating shareable content rather than forcing people to share your content. Imagine yourself making high-quality gunpowder; you still need a spark to set things off.

The qualities of shareable content include, in no particular order:

As for that “spark” to set everything off? That’s going to come in the form of an interested individual or business who takes the first step in sharing your content to a wide audience. By fostering your social media following and syndicating your content there, you can maximize your chances of getting this initial spark.

The Importance of Consistency

When you begin writing, publishing, and syndicating your shareable content, it’s important to stay consistent with what you’re posting:

Additional Considerations

The benefits of a content marketing program or SEO campaign are not going to be immediate, and the effort you put into it is not going to be precisely measurable. The situation gets even more complicated when you consider the relative volatility of search engine rankings and content interest trends.

However, taking the time to create valuable, shareable content for your business is one of the best long-term lead generation strategies you can pursue.

Good content is permanent; it doesn’t expire like a magazine ad, and isn’t vulnerable to the fluctuations of search engine algorithms because it doesn’t rely on gimmicks to get results. There will be ups and downs, and there will be changes in topic trends, but the long-term value of your shared content will eventually far exceed the value of the effort it took to create it.

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