Make Your Content More Shareable With These Insights

The goal of writing a blog or creating premium content is to get them shared so they can reach prospects in your target market. With all the content that's out there, how can you craft content that people want to share?

HubSpot Research and BuzzSumo recently released a report analyzing 175,000 B2B and B2C blog posts, looking at how to optimize content for the maximum amount of shares per social network. The study looked into the differences in social shares, content length, and performance on social networks between B2B and B2C posts and broke down the data. Here's what you need to know.

Interesting Findings

• Longer form content did not perform better for either B2B or B2C content. Average content length is 605 words.
• B2B content performs better on LinkedIn, though on average B2B content gets a similar number of LinkedIn and Facebook shares.
• There is increasing evidence that Facebook is growing in importance for both B2B and B2C content, partly due to the significant reach of Facebook.
• B2B audiences are particularly interested in educational content that will help them be better at their work.
• There is little variation in the shares of B2B and B2C content across Twitter and Google Plus.
• 50% of B2B posts got less than 22 shares.

Recommendations

HubSpot offered the following recommendations based on the study:

• Be strategic where you post, based on your audience and your topics.
• Use headlines that clearly communicate what readers will learn in your content.
• Try not to limit yourself to one playbook, and keep in mind there were outliers in the data that proved there were longer posts out there that skewed the average; meaning it is possible and encouraged to write content that doesn’t follow the norm.
• Test your posts, sharing on different networks at different times of the day, and track your results.

Although there are general best practices that are good to follow, ultimately, the only way you truly know what resonates the most with your audience is to experiment. Test, measure, iterate, and improve, until you hit that sweet spot.