5 Things You Should Be Doing to Make Your Content Stickier

By Sarina Priya, Writer @ Magic Media

Social media has become a central component of most our lives, and though the landscape is a shared space for brands and individuals, businesses need to get smart to win the latter group over.

Savvy business owners and executives are beginning to use social platforms as an outlet to share knowledge and differentiate their personal brands in an effort to drive sales and strike partnerships. By operating at the individual level (rather than exclusively focusing on their company’s brand), these leaders are able to leverage their individual networks to provide value for everyone involved: themselves, their colleagues and their business.

Establishing oneself as a thought leader is one of the best tools for growing a following organically, and as your network grows, so too does your business. The key to building a strong online presence is posting content that resonates with your audience and kickstarts the types of conversations you want to be having.

Let’s discuss a few ways to make your content stickier and more shareable.

1. Quality over quantity; but not instead of

Posting content is a balancing act between quality and frequency. There’s a common misconception that if you post several times a day your engagement will go up naturally, but if what you post isn’t adding any value then people simply won’t engage with it.

Post frequently enough to be noticed, but give your readers something that adds value. When people associate positive experiences with your posts, they will continue to look out for them in the future.

Ideally, don’t sacrifice quality nor quantity, but if you had to pick, choose quality. Poor quality hurts your brand image more than high volume helps it, and moving slowly in the right direction is better than moving quickly in the wrong one.

2. Interlink your content

Nowadays it’s not enough to post quality content, you want to perpetuate audience engagement with your brand. One way to do this is to embed links to other pieces of content you’ve created. Content rabbit holes are an effective way of retaining your viewers’ attention, and are a relatively easy tactic to employ once you begin populating your social media channels with enough of your original posts.

Any time there’s an overlap between two posts, you can link one to the other. This can further inform your content strategy as you can take a piece of information and expand upon it to give it its own dedicated post. This approach helps to scale content that’s proven successful while phasing out the less popular posts, strengthening the quality and quantity of your work.

With this process, thought leaders are able to not only introduce new ideas, but curate the flow of how these ideas are discovered to architect the way readers/viewers arrive at and consume their content.

3. Each outlet is different, so treat them differently

Audiences vary by platform, and in the case of social media one size does not fit all. It’s important to know where your followers spend the most of their time, what kinds of audiences use which social networks, what are the best practices for each channel, and so forth.

Ultimately, content strategy is equal parts creation and distribution. Do a time test with your posts to figure out when your posts get the most engagement. Although optimal posting times can vary based on your following, there are general times that have been shown to be more effective than others. For example, during the Monday-Friday morning commute (8am-9am), lunch (12pm-1pm), and night time commute (4–6pm). Be sure to check out what times are considered the best for each channel.

Furthermore, you should aim to learn how the sharing algorithms for each social media work. On LinkedIn for example, relevancy trumps recency, meaning posts that receive more engagement will continue to outperform new posts (unless they gain traction as well). It’s also been shown that text-centric posts perform best with LinkedIn’s sharing algorithm.

One way we have our clients outmaneuver the algorithm is by tagging people in their posts to prompt engagement. The more views, likes and comments they generate by inviting specific people who are likely to engage over to their post, the more the rest of their network (and even those outside of it) will see their posts as well.

This is just one example of how understanding the platform you’re dealing with can make or break the level of engagement you receive in your posts.

4. Tell a story

Telling a story helps your followers understand what you’re doing and why. This can manifest within an individual post, as well as the overarching themes that tie all your content together.

Stories are an excellent way of humanizing a brand, and can make the work that you’re doing more relatable. Storytelling provokes emotion, improves engagement rates, and sets you apart from the competition.

Creating a content schedule that enables you to tell individual stories within pieces, as well as longer form stories over a collection of pieces ensures a seamless transition from post to post while maintaining uniformity within your personal brand. You’ll have a sense of the story you’re trying to tell before you tell it, which will enable you to string content sequentially to once again design the flow of content consumption. Try to take an educational angle with your posts: be vulnerable, have that climactic tipping point, and offer a practical lesson people can use in their own work.

5. Grow with hashtags

Hashtags are used on every social media platform to allow users to search for topics… so use them! There are two ways to use hashtags, both of which should be used in tandem:

• First, find hashtags that people in your industry are using, something that would increase your visibility and that most people would search for.
• Second, find a hashtag that isn’t too populated so you can stand out from the crowd and “own” that hashtag.

By balancing popular hashtags with lesser used ones, you’ll appear in far more corners of the web than you’d initially think. Owning hashtags will eventually strengthen your personal brand, as some of your audience may come to remember you by your slogan and ideas rather than your name. The goal here is to provide additional sources with which to come across your content.

Stickier Content Leads to Better Business

Social media is an invaluable business tool, and the name of the game is content. Using these five tips to create stickier content, individuals and brands alike can strengthen their image to leverage the opportunities that come from building an online presence.

Magic Media helps founders and executives take their online presence to the next level with custom thought leadership content. If you’re ready to build a strong personal brand, click here to learn more.