Why do we share content? This question is raised out of general curiosity to get the reasons as to why do we feel like sharing a piece of content with our friends or contacts on friend list. There has been no universal answer to this question as it involves a high degree of psychological research. Now the question arises, what kind of content is most likely to be shared? This question is surely of great interest for content writers as well as marketers themselves. Let’s first clarify the term Content Marketing in simple words. It is all about catching the attention of the audience turning it into engagement and targeting to convert them into leads and adding them as customers. Along with this real goal of content marketing is to gain followers and loyal advocates who acclaim for you both online and offline.

We bring to you 5 types of content that are most likely to be shared:-

1. Infographics.
2. Videos.
3. Quizzes.
4. Comparison articles.
5. How-tos.

Infographics. As the name itself suggests it all, it is a simple yet powerful combination of info(information) by way of graphics. So it is info+graphics. Humans have always been curious to know interesting facts. And today what is most likely to be shared is when you present interesting information to your audience by way of graphics which they can comprehend and grasp easily. Human brain says “Reading is hard and looking is easy.” This again is supported by the results of Noah Keyan from Sumo Me, who did most massive social sharing study that has been ever conducted. He discovered that humans process visual information faster than words, hence infographics are incredibly engaging.

Videos. Just like infographics, videos are the next big thing for humans that they are likely to share. There is a lot of variety in videos by way of which they not only communicate the message but also make a brief memory on the mind of the audience. A well-made video can easily grab a big percentage of likes and shares. First person videos are most trending these days. Inspite of being very personal when posted on social media, people like getting unedited visuals which seem raw and fresh to them.

Quizzes. Interactive content is what sells next for content marketers. Customers desire to be a part of content creation and statistic formation. Experts and content marketing trends have concluded from the data that, “clearly, content is going interactive”. Quizzes similar to infographics are very easily available to everyone irrespective of the size of the business and brands. Without affecting your budget much, you can easily create a quiz by just finding right subject and applying relevant tools.

Comparison Articles. Comparing things, people, attributes and almost everything is liked by humans. So, any article that compares two similar products, places, people, ideas or anything that excites people is likely to be highly shared. This is an easy way to get bigger audience as you just have to pick two topics and present their relevance and realities for your customers.

How-To. This is an old format of content, guiding and helping people on how to do anything. The chances of such content being shared by people depend on the quality and extent of thorough explanation given by the writer. Diagrams, pictures, graphs and videos can be a good way to enhance the content.

Apart from all these types of content that get easily shared by people, we give a brief list of attributes of content that produces more desirable results for the content marketers.

1. Original Content. Authentic and crisp content sells the most. Audiences like originality and freshness of the content. So whenever posting for social media schedule an original content.
2. Relevant Content. Postings scheduled on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or other social media platforms need to be relevantly created and posted. As Twitter needs formal and a bit serious content, on facebook you can share casual and semi-casual posts and on Instagram you can post casual or personal or other stuffs.
3. Timely content. Immediate and prompt action motivates you and your team to get more shares. Creating and releasing the content early on the day of celebration, the chance of being greatly shared increases.
4. Digestible Content. Posting a piece of content that is easy to process, digest and engage with, is the one which gets eagerly shared. For this you need to schedule your posts at the best time of the day.
5. Call to action. The content that you are publishing for your audience should have a plea and call to action. If your content appeals the reader, he would surely follow the call.

We hope that this blog post would have surely added to your knowledge bank. So keep reading and stay tuned for our next blog.