The Internet is becoming more and more social with each passing day. You’ll find that the major search engines have started to give utmost importance to the social factor. Here’s how social media is helping people and the search engines find better content:
a) Social sites like Facebook and Twitter are thriving communities made up of millions and millions of people from all walks of life. People using these social networks are highly active when it comes to collectively curating content and sharing it. If a piece of content is truly worthy, it infects people and spreads around easily using various social routes.
b) There’s something called the “Network Effect”. Wikipedia defines it as “the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people.” The successful social sites and services thrive on this very law. So if your content proves to be useful, helpful, entertaining or anything worthy – it will have the same effect.
c) Recommendations are powerful, and you’ll find a lot of ‘recommending’ happening in the online social world. People refer people to anything and everything that is awesome. This one reason is enough for the search engines to take social media seriously.
Given below are 5 effective tips to make your social content go viral and supercharge your SEO efforts:
1) Share Your Scary Ideas – Ever had an idea that’s just too risky to share? Or perhaps something that you were just unsure about? If your answer is yes, then you need to start creating content based on your scary ideas.
Treat your execution as an experiment and see where your idea goes. The worst that can happen is that it’ll fizzle out, but if it works out, it may very well become the next Internet phenomenon.
2) Spark a Controversy – If you’re a blogger, you should know the kind of attention controversies attract. Writing something controversial can really set things off.
By no means does your controversial content have to be offensive. It could be something that sparks off a healthy little debate and gives you some social love.
3) Create Extensive Lists – There’s no doubt about the fact that people love reading lists. Look around and you’ll find that ‘lists’ are the most popular forms of content online. Writing long lists of tips, reasons, mistakes, myths, tactics, things, etc can be fun!
What’s more, you’ll also end up giving real value to your readers, which may result in hundreds of social shares. Targeted lists are almost guaranteed to work, given that you’re giving quality.
4) Become a Resource – Content that is resourceful in nature will never go out of fashion. It will always be evergreen. People like reading and sharing helpful stuff. When you give extreme value with your content, you won’t be ignored.
If you can show, guide and teach, you’ll easily grab that most wanted attention from your target audience. Remember, the more people talk about you in the online social circles, the more recognition your content gets – the more it spreads.
5) Be Yourself – Don’t make the mistake of trying to present yourself as a major, faceless corporation – it’ll backfire. Social networks are all about building relationships and connecting with real people. Regardless of what niche you’re into, make sure your content is personality driven.
Be yourself and show people who you are and what you can do.
This not only helps you become an authority in your market, but also gives your content the necessary social fuel to climb the search engine ladder.
