3 Proven Techniques to Find Content Worth Sharing

When a business or social media expert shares a post online, they are expecting it to get as many views and shares as possible.

This is important for several reasons.

First of all, if someone is sharing a post for their business, more people will become aware of their company and what they have to offer when it is viewed by thousands of people. This is a simple way to get company and product awareness without having to spend money on other forms of advertising.

If an individual is sharing a post, they prefer it to get thousands of views because this can be used for establishing thought leadership and promoting their business.

However, finding the right content to share as part of the social media curation process is not always the easiest thing to do.

People sometimes spend hours surfing the web looking for content they can share which will gain views and keep their readers interested.

It’s difficult to find content because there are so many existing posts on the web, and posting something that is already out there will not interest a reader who is looking for new information.

Someone who is looking to share an interesting post with their audience will want to find an article that is going to keep their readers interested, and is also worth sharing so it will gain views.

Nobody wants to waste time spending hours on the web reading through lists and checking out different feeds to find content to share if they don’t have to.

In this article we share 3 proven techniques to find good ideas for a shareable post, using social media velocity, identifying highly shareable content and leveraging the power of popular hashtags.

Let Social Velocity Propel Your Content to the Next Level

Social velocity is important to consider when searching for content for sharing on social media because it determines whether or not people are currently interested in a topic.

Social velocity is the speed at which a post is being shared.

It’s great if a business can share with their audience a post that will eventually get lots of shares, but it’s even better if they can get those same shares in a single day.

This is possible if people are interested in the topic of a post and the knowledge they gain from reading it. There are plenty of tools available which can help someone find out the social velocity of a post, which is critical to someone who plans on creating a viral post.

Klout is perhaps one of the most efficient content discovery tools. This platform searches for interesting content that is tailored to what your audience is interested in based on topics. The “Newest” tab includes high-velocity social media posts that are relevant to your followers.

Klout also lets you share that interesting content through their platform.

By separating the signals from the noise and providing relevant content, Klout increases the chances of your audience spend more time on your social media networks and returning for more in the future.

BuzzSumo provides a unique content discovery tool. It discloses the most shared content on the internet and displaces these using different criteria such as the type of content, the date the content was published, as well as the keywords and so on.

BuzzSumo Trending allows you to monitor high-velocity content and articles that are trending in any topic across all social networks. You can monitor this content in a single feed. By doing so, it replaces tools such as RSS readers, social media lists, and groups.

You can sort content by trending (the velocity of shares) or the most shared stories today.

Flipboard Trending section is another great internet content discovery tool that can assist you to discover great content on the internet as determined by velocity on Flipboard . Flipboard is free to use, you can easily browse through thirty thousand topics.

Clicking on one of the topics on the Flipboard Trending page will take you to the trending content on this specific topic. It is a great way to find topical high-velocity social media posts to share with your followers.

Generally, a tool that shows a post’s social velocity is going to provide useful information, such as what platforms a post has been shared on (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and how fast it’s happening.

It will also show how many shares each platform is getting.

If a post has been shared 500 times in one day and 2,500 times over the past week, it’s safe to say that the content is something people are interested in and that future submission of the same post in the near future is likely popular as well.

The social velocity tool will usually break down the shares so the person creating a new post will know where they should first post their content. If 400 of the 500 shares a post has in the past day are on Facebook, then that’s where the post should be posted first.

Leverage Shares Counts to Improve Your Content Search

Another great way to locate information that can be useful when sharing a new post is to check out how many times an existing post has been shared overall.

If a post has plenty of shares, it means that people on social media are talking about and interested in that particular topic. If a business plans on sharing interesting content with their readers, they should check out the most shared topics.

It’s good to look at the most shared posts online to gather information from them, but it’s never a good idea to use the same wording and angle as that existing post when resharing it.

The person searching for information needs to jot down notes and create an outline that can be used for their post based on the information from multiple top-shared posts.

For example, if one of the top shared posts being looked at is about Popular Clothing Trends for Girls Last Summer, then it would be best to transform that information into something else.

That topic could easily be turned into something like Why Were So Many Girls Wearing Halter Tops Last Summer?

This is a simple way to take advantage of the information that people are interested in and reshare it in a way that will still be read by the same people who read the top-viewed one.

If the first post received 1,000 shares in a month, then it’s reasonable to assume that a reshare highlighting an interesting aspect the will also be popular.

Crate is a fantastic content discovery tool. It delivers great contents that are meant to satisfy your needs. It can equally assist you in sharing your content on the internet. If you use the platform, you are not going to find it hard to get relevant content.

All you need to do is to define the topics that are most interesting for your audience and Crate will discover the best content that you can share.

Crate is integrated with buffer. It will help you as it shortens the time to look for new content and even offer the suggestion that can help solve your content needs.

Scoop.it Suggestion Engine allows you to organize the web content in a way that it will be relevant to your audience needs.

The Suggestion Engine incorporates an integrated popularity indicator, a visual indicator of popularity. The more a piece of content is popular, the more it becomes relevant and makes sense to be shared with your followers. It allows you to re-amplify a piece of content that is already well spread.

The suggestion engine browses the web every day and analyzes content from different streams such as RSS feeds, social media network streams, articles, images, and videos. Based on Scoop.it blog, it “applies a set of semantic and statistical algorithms to analyze relevancy, based on the combination of keywords and phrases you give it to define your topics”.

Pocket Recommendations is another great content discovery tool that has become very popular over the last year. Many people use Pocket to capture the most interesting stories that matter to them. Recommendations capture the best content being saved across Pocket introduces it to your own reading habits.

Recommendations become better the more you recommend content to your followers on Pocket. It also recognizes better recommendations tailored to you based on the people you follow and the content you favorite on their platform.

Find Content By Following Hashtags Strategically

Hashtags are also another great way to locate good content for a potential social media post. Those who need ideas may want to try searching social media platforms for hashtags that are related to the topic they are trying to write about.

For example, if someone is trying to create a post about clothing for girls, then they may want to try searching for hashtags that revolve around this topic. This could be anything from #girlsfashion, #haltertops, or anything like this.

This will yield a list of results that can be used to figure out how popular a particular topic is.

Also, hashtags are centered around a very focused group.

Those who search for #haltertops are probably going to be girls who are interested in finding out what is popular right now or where to buy new clothes.

Either way, they will be people who are interested in spending money or reading up on the latest fashion trends (views).

When someone is going to content search based on hashtags, it’s important to check out how many views and shares each post that comes up under the hashtag has. If there are only a few results under a hashtag search, that post is probably not very popular right now.

If hundreds of results come up under a hashtag search that has thousands of views each, this is a great place to find ideas for a new social media post.

Read through some of the top-viewed and top-shared posts to see what people are talking about and take notes on this.

Consider applying a badge to the most popular posts as well; a company can easily get their name out there by strategically putting their badge on the right posts.

Google+ is a great content discovery tool. It has different features that make it possible for you to discover great content on the internet. One of such important features is What’s Hot page. This page brings out or highlights those most important and most interesting content on the internet and sorts it by hashtags.

Moreover, the redesign of Google+ to look like Pinterest makes it lot easier for you to discover great content on the internet. It makes it easier for you to bring forward scannable and better content, and it does that through a new tiled design.

Talkwalker Virality Map allows you to figure out exactly how a successful tweet, Facebook post or news article spreads through different media types. The virality of the post is also measured across countries and languages. Using a virality Map can identify hidden gems and help you discover popular posts.

Benefit From Sharing an Existing Post

It’s also important to make sure that a business gets credit for any content sharing they do of existing topics. Content discovery is something a business can get credit for, even if they didn’t create the post that they are sharing.

Popular posts can be shared by a business, whose followers may additionally share the post as well. This is important because a post that’s likely going to be viewed by thousands of people can also be shared by a business who puts their badge on it so they can be viewed as an endorsement of that post.

This is critical because content discovery can benefit both parties, the company putting their badge on the post and the creator of the post.

If a clothing company puts their badge on a social media post that’s about girl’s clothing trends, those who view the post will likely be interested in the clothing companies that endorse that topic.

This is a very simple way to increase a company’s popularity in a short period of time.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it doesn’t have to be stressful to find content each time a new post needs to be published. Finding content for social media frustrates so many people, but there’s really no reason to feel that way.

Using the internet to find the most popular topics right now is the best way to locate content for a business’s new posts. Those who need to create a new post can simply let the internet guide them in their search if they know what to look for and how to look for it.

Getting information from popular/trending topics is going to be the best way to increase the chances of getting high views and shares on a new post gets because people want to read about them.

Creating a random post that doesn’t provide any new information or isn’t something people currently care about is not going to benefit a company in any way.

While a company is going to content search for useful information to create a new post from on social media, they need to be sure to put their badge on posts that relate to their own company.

It doesn’t need to be difficult to find content for fresh, creative posts. Gaining popularity on social media also doesn’t have to be difficult. There are plenty of tools that can be taken advantage of in order to increase how many people are checking out a business’s website or page.

There are also basic ways to find out what’s popular right now to ensure a business is creating the right posts that are worth reading. It’s also important to keep in mind how beneficial content sharing can be, even if the post being shared doesn’t belong to the business that created it.

How Will You Start A Fire?

If you’re ready to stop spending endless hours curating content and receiving little to no credit, Start A Fire can amplify your social media content curation strategy with the click of a button.

Join Start A Fire today and get the full value from your shared content.


Originally published at blog.startafire.com on April 4, 2016.