Making Your Content Marketing “Lucky”

by | Mar 17, 2014 | Articles, Content Marketing

March 17, 2014: Saint Patrick’s Day is here, so the Luck of the Irish is on our minds. But as As Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Han Solo in Star Wars, luck, at least as a discrete phenomenon, may not exist. While we may not have the Force or a Four Leaf Clover to grant us fair fortune, we do have the ability to make our content lucky – to endow it with certain properties that increase its chance – its “luck” – of being noticed, shared, and remembered.

How can you make your content more likely to be shared?
Content that’s able to be easily shared is content that wins. We all know how great content can drive people to your site and drive conversions, and how great content marketing can raise the profile of brands.

  • Make it happy (this includes funny). Content that’s either happy or “feel good” can create long-term loyalty with your brand or content channel. A great example of this is President Barack Obama’s interview on Between Two Ferns. While somewhat snarky, this is a classic example of how to successfully use content to generate leads. The success metrics aren’t imaginary: they’re represented by the number of resultant sign-ups at the healthcare.gov website.
  • Make it awesome. Upworthy are the masters of this. Awesome content is generally a combination of happy plus shocking.
  • Make it angry. Anger is the source for a lot of online content, which is designed to deliberately insight fury in the reader. Angry content can be exceedingly effective in generating engagement and being shared, but unwanted blowback can have lasting effects on one’s brand. News sites like Daily Kos and Newsmax are masters of this form of viral biliousness.
  • Make it scary. Fear is another fundamental emotional basis of shareworthy content across many sites and channels. Horror (Zombies, Vampires, and weird cults) is much in the mass mind these days for reasons that go beyond the scope of this column. Anxiety generates interest and shareability – it’s worrisome but true.

Of course, making “edgy” content of any kind is a calculated risk to both your PR and your branding.  As your brand builds, your audience will develop a memory for certain “strains” of content. If these types of content aren’t cordoned off under particular categories and headlines, the unplanned resonance of the content can have unpredictable effects on your branding. Always consider what long term, strategic effect a piece of content will have on your brand versus the short term, tactical effect it may have. If you have a doubt, escalate it to management before, not after you post.

Make it surprising. This is one of the reasons why sites like Buzzfeed, Daily Dot, and Upworthy are able to stay at the top of the content marketing game. In my own recent article on Lame Marketing Phrases, I shared a bunch of lame marketing catchwords. This article was of a type we didn’t usually run (humor articles), but it was relevant (catchphrases from the digital marketing world), and it took off on social networks. Being able to look at content in a new, surprising or humorous way will always help your content rise above [everyone else’s] boring drone. Question: will this offend some readers?

Find the social sweet spot. Try for as large a reach as possible, but not to the extent where your audience and partners are no longer interested in engaging with you. Finding content marketing allies who can gain from their association with you and vice-versa is better than simply following someone with a huge social following who will not reciprocate, as is shown by what happens when someone tweets to a celebrity. An example is when I received back a Facebook mention from one of my favorite European music stars, Faderhead, who told me about his U.S. tour in response to a shout out. I doubt that Justin Bieber would have responded in the same way – his FollowBack ratio is (according to our data) just 0.001 percent.

Know the platform; know thy audience. Different platforms have different technical structures and cultures. Sharing a piece of content on Reddit may have an entirely different pattern of performance than, say, Google Plus or LinkedIn. Content will need to be modified to match the expectations of the audiences of the respective platforms. You should also take into account the various sponsored and paid options for your platform, such as Twitter’s  Sponsored Tweets or Facebook Sponsored Post

We wish you a happy St. Patrick’s Day – may all your content be lucky – and keep you and yours safe from the great sorrows of Internet Indifference.

Have a question about Content Marketing, Strategy, or Social Media? Contact us.

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