Why Content Goes Viral: What Analyzing 100 Million Articles Taught Us.
I recently read an article by Okdork.com’s Noah Kagan. Noah is a smart dude, his tongue in cheek blog is all about marketing, startups, self-expiration and life as an Internet entrepreneur.
With degrees in Business and Economics which have seen him work at global giants Intel, Microsoft and Facebook before becoming the Director of Marketing at digital agency Mint, Noah is well known in the digital marketing industry and founded KickFlip and AppSumo.
I’m an avid follower of Noah's blog. One of his blog’s that has resonated is a question that pops up here on the forum quite a bit, ‘Why Content Goes Viral: What Analysing 100 Millions Articles Taught Us”. See link to article here http://okdork.com/2014/04/21/why-con...les-taught-us/
In the blog, Noah writes about his analysis of the BuzzSumo website and the what he found to be the common elements of viral content.
The BuzzSumo team focused on a range of questions to find out why content went global including:
- What type of emotions did the article invoke?
- What type of posts got the most shares?
- What length were the blogs?
- Did trust play a part in whether the article was shared?
- Did the post have images?
- How many people shared the post in the days after the article was published?
- What day of the week is the best day to publish?
Long form content gets more social shares than short form - while we’re always taught less is more, the opposite is true in this case. The longer the content the more it gets shared. 3000 to 10000 word articles get more shares that short form of less than 1000 words.There are plenty more findings or why content goes viral in this article and it is well worth a read.
Having more than one image in your post will contribute to Facebook shares - this means that to post to social media sites you should always include a visual element to optimise its opportunity to go viral. Furthermore, articles that included the Facebook preview image meta tag usually get three times the shares than those that don’t have this. The same is true for Twitter, add an image and it will prosper on Twitter.
Appeal to the reader’s emotions - when 10,000 articles were shared, emotions were a key factor in engagement including awe, laughter, amusement, joy plus many more. Sharing valuable content to friends shows we have good taste and spur conversation, and this may be one of the key reasons for this trend. Quizzes were a popular shared item, this may be due to the fact that this fuels our identity and ego.
Sharing lists and infographics a super popular - this is one of the key areas where people like to share. Infographics and lists stand out from the crowd as far as popular posts and are far and away more likely to be shared onto social networks. The reason behind this may be that the reader prefers to be able to skim an article and quickly gather the info, or the visual elements make the information easier to digest.
Lists work best in lots of 10 - this seems to be the magic number for these types of articles, and the most shared lists include lots of ten tips.
People will share content that looks trustworthy - this plays a major role in whether people will share content. If the writer has a byline or bio, the article is more likely to be shared on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +.
A link to the article can be viewed here Why Content Goes Viral: What Analyzing 100 Million Articles Taught Us. | OkDork.com
Have you found any other pearls of wisdom for why content goes viral?
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