What we learn from examining 1 million blog posts.
It seems that everyone has now jumped on the content marketing bandwagon. But just because everyone is doing it, doesn’t mean that they are having success.
Only 9% of B2B marketers consider their content marketing efforts to be “very effective. Content Marketing Institute
For many agencies and businesses, content marketing isn’t working.
Their content isn’t producing traffic and without traffic they aren’t achieving new business leads.
Two companies, BuzzSumo and Moz that are experts in SEO, teamed up to evaluate over one million articles and determine why the majority of online content was ignored. Their initial findings indicated how to increase shares and links of your content for agency new business. It provides us with a better understanding of the type of content that earns higher shares, links and thus, more online traffic.
Here are the insights to improving your agency’s content shares and links:
- 50% of posts get low shares and very low links. The majority of content that is being created is not valued enough to share or link.
- Time invested in content marketing is wasted due to producing poor content or failing to amplify it.
- Content gets a lot more shares than links. Shares are much easier to obtain. It is harder work involved to get links. Everyone can share content, often through the click of a button, not everyone can easily link to content.
- Long form content consistently receives more shares and links than shorter-form content
- 85% of content published (excluding videos and quizzes) is less than 1,000 words long. However, long form content of over 1,000 words consistently receives more shares and links than shorter form content.
- There is no overall correlation of shares and links.
- List blog posts are powerful. They consistently achieve much higher shares on average than other content formats.
- In terms of achieving links, list blog posts and why blog posts achieve a higher number of referring domain links than other blog post formats on average.
- If you want likes and shares you should create deep research or opinion-forming content.
- Surprisingly, the average level of shares for infographics is very low.
- The study shows that content needs some form of intrinsic value to achieve links. This is indicated in previous studies that suggests comprehensive and evergreen content gains more links.
People share and link to content for different reasons.
“The research suggests that social sharing is more personal than linking. Sharing in many ways helps define who you are. A share can highlight issues you are passionate about. A share can show your support for friends or colleagues. Sharing is also relatively easy to do. Often, it is no more than a click of a button.
Links by contrast are much harder to acquire. Our study suggests that short form content that does not provide new insights, that simply repeats previous research or provides advice that is not backed by serious study is unlikely to acquire a high level of referring domain links.”
Here are some of the reasons why people SHARE content:
- Give – offers, discounts
- Advise – tips, useful information
- Warn – about dangers
- Amuse – entertaining content
- Inspire – inspirational quotes
- Amaze – amazing pictures or facts
- Unite – being part of your tribe
Here are some of the reasons why people will LINK to content:
- Highly relevant and useful
- Comprehensive content with evergreen longevity
- Authoritative content in an industry
- Exceptional content
- Reciprocity. People will link where the linking is about partnership or reciprocity.
It’s time to enhance your content marketing strategy for a greater return on your time investment.
Click on the following link to download the full research report fromBuzzSumo.
