Not Everybody Bakes for a Living!
Let’s get straight to the point. You work in a niche B2B industry. You’re looking to increase your engagement and the number of backlinks to your website’s content. You’re frustrated, it seems easy for those in the B2C arena – you see examples churning out a few glossy, mouth-watering recipes including their product and watch the shares roll in!
You know your approach needs to be different. So, you have a quick search on Google to find some shareable solutions, and come across quotes including:
“Most people look for content that offers practical value, is entertaining, is awe-inspiring, and is credible. P.E.A.C. content is good content that people actually want to read.”– Nadya Khoja
“My definition of high-quality content is basically the content that you, the creator, the publisher or the content marketer, find good enough to share on your own Facebook wall.” – Ann Smarty
“Whether you like it or not, pop culture and memes drive massive amounts of shares. If you can tactfully use culture or memes in your content, it will drive up the number of shares it receives.”– Alex Jasin
If you work in a B2B industry, and can make any of these points work for you – do it! But, if you find yourself pondering how you can tie in a meme to your latest precision engineering blog post, you should probably be finding a different way to make it shareable. If you can’t use some of these methods tactfully, and it seems forced. Stop. Now.
The fact of the matter is, your blog content isn’t always going to be awe-inspiring, hilarious, or something viral appearing on your Facebook feed. However, does that mean it isn’t shareable? Or worthy of being linked backed to? No!
How do I create shareable content then?
Here are our actionable guidelines for creating shareable content when you’re part of a niche industry.
- Take a step back and review
Gaining insight is the first step to understanding what has been performing well for you and what hasn’t so far. Make note of previous content pieces that have performed well and try to figure out what it is that has made this content stand out from the rest. Has it been keyword targeted well? What format does it follow? Is the imagery strong? Does it include mixed media? Is it particularly helpful? Try to replicate what worked well with another post – you can also expand and re-share any content that is performing well. Additionally, it is worth undertaking competitor analysis to look at what others in your industry are doing – can you fill a gap?
- If it can’t be funny, make it useful
If you can’t go for the entertainment value, utilising helpful ‘how to’ and ‘ways to’ posts are another avenue. Useful instructions people can refer back to are likely to be shared with others who could also benefit from them. As well as doing keyword research for industry questions, look at Yahoo Answers and Quora to find questions people are asking. If you can’t find an answer easily to the questions people are asking, or you think you could answer it more comprehensively, give it a go.
- Mention people and let them know!
By mentioning other people/partners in your post, you can then reach out and let them know you have featured them via social media or email. Not only does this mean potential additional traffic to your content, but expanded reach if they share with their audiences.
- Make it timely and available
Do you have industry conferences throughout the year? Make note of them early on so you can produce content in line with the times of year. Ensuring your content is visible and ranking in search prior to conferences/events means you have an advantage over those posting last minute. Even if you have to come back and update the post, you’ll have a head start. You could add slides from the event, write an opinion piece or write a round up (again, make sure to let speakers know if you’ve mentioned them in your content).
- Promote it correctly
Promoting your content on social media effectively can make all the difference. First and foremost, ensure you are using relevant, eye catching imagery to draw your audiences’ eyes to the post. Also ensure you are using catchy headlines on Twitter, perhaps with a good statistic, and have tidy, clean Title Tags and Meta-descriptions on Facebook. Schedule it to share several times on Twitter, and pin it to the top of your channels for a period of time. Use hashtags to get your post seen in front of relevant audiences.
Content not getting the visibility it deserves?
If you want your content to be more shareable and visible online, speak to MRS Digital. We can help your business’s content make more of an impact online.
