The Secret to Share-Worthy Content: Tips for Awesome Content Creation

Originally published - Sep 2016

Back in 2016, Google AdSense’s Audience Development Specialist, Jay Castro, shared three great tips for creating share-worthy content on Inside Adsense, Google's official blog for news, tips and information on AdSense.

Castro mentioned that people love to share things with their friends, family and colleagues, and that presenting your users with relevant and unique content is the best way to encourage sharing and give you a competitive advantage.

“Content that is underscored by emotion, in particular, can help you strengthen your brand’s presence,” he wrote on Inside Adsense. Castro’s tips are:

1. Be relatable by catering to your audience’s interests.

“Taking the time to research what your visitors are interested in is the first step to creating shareable content,” wrote Castro. He advised diversifying your content to cover multiple facets of your audience’s interests by including work, lifestyle and social topics that’ll help keep things fresh and engaging.

2. Keep up-to-date with the latest trends.

“Being a thought leader means not only sharing up-to-the-minute industry news with your audience, but also offering insightful observations and predictions of what this may mean down the road,” Castro added, insisting that “a trusted source is a followed source.”

3. Increase your content’s shelf life.

“While timely articles are great for generating instant buzz, having content that maintains its importance over time yields higher traffic rate overall,” Castro continued. “Evergreen content is information that stays relevant no matter when it is consumed. Make sure to interlace trendier content with evergreen pieces every so often,” he stressed.

3 More Tips for Awesome Content Creation

Here are three more tips that have been proven to help create awesome content that encourages sharing:

4. Inject positive emotions.

In a world that is wrought with negativity, people like to feel inspired and motivated. That’s why when you place content that evokes positive emotions in front of the right audience it can spread at an incredible rate. Many of us actually see countless inspirational posts pass through our social media feeds each day. People really want to share content that makes them feel good in hopes of passing along the emotional experience to other people. So, inject your posts with those positive emotions to encourage sharing.

Positive emotions include amusement (entertaining and fun), interest (engaging and clever), surprise (unexpected or novel). These emotions can be the X-factor that helps your content blow up. Other positive emotions include happiness, pleasure, delight, hope, affection and excitement.

5. Pair contrasting emotions.

You won’t always have to create content that tackles subjects that elicit positive emotions. Sometimes you’ll need to tackle somber topics. Try varying your content creation style by contrasting emotions. For example, you can pair feelings like hope and despair, fear and admiration or sadness and affection. It helps evoke feelings of empathy and heightens other emotions, resulting in more than a one-dimensional emotional response in your audience. Hit ‘em right in the feels and it can help drive sharing.

6. Pull in the audience with your headline.

The best headlines pull in the audience by creating anticipation. Whether it will be the title of your published article or your visual content, take time to brainstorm your headline. Choose a catchy headline that creates a “knowledge gap” that piques the audience’s curiosity and makes them want to know more (not too vague, but not too specific). Don’t overhype it – people won’t share content they feel was oversold by the title. Also check out our tips on how to create clickable headlines without being manipulative.

Don’t also forget to make sure your social share buttons are easy to find on your web page so that it is easy to share your content.

What would you add to the list? Please add your tips in the comments section below.