6 Reasons Why Your Content Isn’t Spreading as Far as It Should

When you’re creating content for social media campaigns, the distance it spreads and the number of users who share it is likely to be a big measuring stick for its success or failure. There’s a number of factors that go into why a particular piece spreads farther than others and that usually starts with the quality of the content. But even if you’ve created something truly remarkable, the job isn’t finished. You may still wind up asking yourself why it wasn’t as big a success as it should have been? Here are the 6 most common answers to that very question:

1. Lack of Promotion

Quite often, a lot of time is put into content worth spreading but it just never gets seen, or rather, it never hits that crucial tipping point where the spreading takes over and becomes “viral”. Certainly some content will need more of a push than others. And content with a high viral potential needs only a little push, while lower potential content may need a shove…or four. The fact is: all content needs (at least) a nudge. Otherwise you’re left with a great piece that too few will ever see.

If you don’t already have a strong enough user-base, you need to do your due diligence and network before you decide to start pushing your content. Be sure to show a willingness to return the favor, and others will line up to help you spread yours. If you don’t have the time or patience to get this done (believe me, it requires both), find someone who does.

2. Your Title is Boring…

One of the first things all internet marketers need to learn is the art of writing a compelling title. Even if you’re writing a boring article like: the mating patterns of Japanese beetles, it benefits you to be a little sensationalist. Give people a REASON to read your article, and just in case they don’t: give them a reason to spread it. You’ll find that either way, 90% of your ‘readers’ won’t bother to read the entire thing and their judgment will be based solely on the title. So if you want your content to spread, even if it’s the most fantastic and interesting article ever written, you’re going to need a fantastic and interesting title.

3. You’re Being Too Commercial

Link bait, blog spam, viral advertising. These are just some of the “words-of-death” that you might hear when your social marketing piece falls flat. If you’re hearing them, you’ve done something wrong. Something very specific. It’s not necessarily that your content isn’t good enough. But what probably happened is that you were too worried about the marketing benefits of your campaign that you got in the way of your own success. Perhaps you have too much advertising on your site. Maybe your revenue generating call-to-action form is too prominent. Sometimes it might just be that your brand message is too in your face.

Some brands may be able to get away with more than others. Nike (for example) can probably get away with more than Wal-mart. Why? Because their brand is sexier and more fun. You need to understand the limits of your campaign goals and what you can get away with. Conversion optimization may work great for your PPC campaign, but in social media you need to keep a balance between your marketing goals and the viral potential of your campaign.

4. Design flaws

Pro tip: If you aren’t a designer, you may want to hire one. Once users get past the title of your content, they’ll take only 3 seconds before they decide what they’re going to do. Read or skim, interact or run, spread or bury – and the look and design has everything to do with that first three seconds.
Just to clarify: aesthetics isn’t everything. You can have a beautiful design that does nothing but send your users running for the next link. You need to remember why you want them there, what action(s) you want them to take, and be sure the UI and layout is optimized for those actions first. Then make sure the aesthetics is up-to-par, but more importantly, appropriate for the content and message you’re trying to convey.
The three most important social design features:

1. Make sure the message or content’s intent is clear, front, and center
2. Make sure the action(s) you want them to take are clear & prominent enough
3. Make sure the content is easy to access & read and isn’t too intimidating for your average user who has limited time and a shrinking attention span.

5. You’ve Missed your Target Audience

It’s OK for websites or brands to step out of their normal content comfort zone online. While I’d never recommend creating content that deliberately alienates your current base, going a bit outside the box can be an interesting exercise in testing the limits of your market. It can be a great way to expand your audience and spread your brand to new demographics. The problem is, when you do this, you can’t always rely on your current user/customer base to help spread the word. And if you go too far outside, before you fail, you might want to consider why you’re doing it in the first place.

If your target audience for your brand is normally, say, women between 20-40, depending on your brand it’s probably wise to either continue targeting women, or perhaps you might target men of the same age. Either way, the further outside your normal zone you go, the more challenging it becomes to create content that spreads. As always: tread carefully.

6. Misuse of social media tools & networks

One of the more common mistakes I see on a daily basis is the misuse of the available social media tools. Make sure before you start using any particular service, tool, or social media site, that you take the time to get to know the ropes. More specifically: some of the “unwritten rules” of the service. Understand the limits to what kind of “push” or promotion is acceptable and what borders on spam.

Also, while it may be tempting to create content and submit it to as many services as you can, the truth is, you might be wasting valuable time. You may be better off creating content for a specific network and focus on spreading on that one. For example, some content does better on Twitter than it does on Facebook. And if you want to do a simple poll, perhaps a Facebook widget is the way to go. Bottom line: get to know the spaces you’re promoting your content in or (again): find someone who already does.

Keep Your Website Content Unique: Battle The Pirates That Are Stealing Your Content

You’ve worked hard to create some great content for your site. You’ve done all the right things. You’ve written original articles that are great for users and are optimized for excellent search engine placement.

Everything seems fine until you start to do some searches to see exactly how well your content is performing. You look for a few of your articles and find websites from here to the Ukraine that are posting your articles.

Why keeping your content unique to your website is important

This is a problem. The value of your content is instantly diluted or maybe even totally lost when other websites copy it. Here’s why:

• Your branding is threatened. Suddenly you’re no longer the sole source of the information you have provided. Readers will not recognize you as the authority. Most will assume that the information originated at whatever website they first found it.
• Your bottom line suffers. If you have a product or service that you’re selling, someone else will be able to swoop in and take a slice of your market share.
• You slide down the search results pages. Sites that pirate your content may end up ranking above you within the search results, especially if they are more establish sites with more backlinks. While it’s true that search engines try to determine where copy originated, it’s a tough task and they often fail.
• You risk being penalized. If the search engines think your site is mostly duplicate content, you could be algorithmically penalized for having what the search engines think is a low quality site.

You don’t want to suffer any of these nightmares so it’s vitally important that you keep your content unique to your website and prevent the content thieves from swooping in and doing a major copy and paste job on all your hard work.

Copying web content without permissions IS stealing and it IS illegal

Let’s get one fact out of the way: stealing your web content is illegal. It doesn’t matter what excuse someone gives you—it’s against the law. I’ve had people claim that because they weren’t using it to sell something it was okay for them to repost my content. That’s just not true.

You may have a article pirate say something like, “Hey sorry, but you didn’t have a copyright notice posted, so it’s fair game.” Again, this just isn’t true.

Here are the facts:

• Virtually everywhere, and certainly in the United States, you are protected the moment your publish your material and it doesn’t matter if you publish to paper or electronically to the web. If they don’t believe you just send them here.
• There doesn’t have to be money or profit involved. Even if the website isn’t selling anything, it still can’t steal your articles. Small sections of articles can be quoted or referenced for news reporting, reviews or educational purposes. But lifting large sections or whole articles is definitely against the law.

Scare the pirates away before they attack

Just like mom used to say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so even though you don’t need to post a copyright notice on your pages, do it. You’ll be eliminating one excuse a future thief might throw back at you. You should also consider a Copyscape badge.

Track the pirates down and bring them to justice

But let’s face it, that won’t stop all the people who are too lazy to create their own content. Here are a few steps to take once you’ve discovered that your articles are popping up like weeds all over the Internet.

The idea is to start at the source and if you don’t get results, start turning up the heat and branching out. First send a nice email to the site explaining the situation and asking them to remove your content. Always be very polite – many webmasters are simply ignorant of the fact that copying content without permission is stealing. You may get results by politely asking them to remove your content from their site.

If that doesn’t do it, send a “cease and desist” letter via registered mail. If the owner of the website doesn’t remove your copy after receiving the letter, send one to the webhost. Unless the offending website can prove that their site owns the content, the webhost is required to remove it.

Finally, if all else fails, pick up the phone and call a good lawyer. You can sue to have the material removed and the thief might also be forced to pay restitution.

Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/content-unique-battle-pirates-stealing-your-content/29632

How to Write and Format Web Content

Web Content Writing is not like writing a college paper (thank goodness), which means you probably don’t have a lot of practice at ideal formatting. Unlike the world of academia where literally millennia have gone into developing forms and formats, webpages have only had a couple brief decades to find their bearings. To help those still in the early phases of writing web content (a.k.a. the phase of confusion and panic), here is a basic checklist to go through before publishing work.

Are My Sentences Too Long?
Every sentence will express a very different thought, so variation is natural and even good in writing. However, sentences that extend too long will simply confuse and infuriate readers. Try to keep your sentences no longer than about 40 words, which equates to about two lines in average web publications.

Are My Paragraphs Too Long?
Advice varies on how long paragraphs should be, but the general consensus is they should be “edible.” What this means for the standard user is typically somewhere around three to five lines of text, or roughly 50 to 100 words. Variation is certainly acceptable, but it shouldn’t extend too far beyond the crunch three to five lines.

Are My Sentences Too Complex?
Are you using several independent clauses, all joined together, one after another, in a series of commas that seems to never end, running on forever like it’s being chased, kind of like I’m doing now; perhaps it doesn’t even end with a typical period but instead continues, frivolously, self-interjecting, whisking around – like it’s beating brownie batter! – and, in the end, doing nothing more than confusing all your readers. There can be something elegant and beautiful about complex sentences, but they diminish reader comprehension and patience.

As a general standard, try not to have more than two independent clauses in a sentence (that will usually mean no more than one comma) and use abnormal punctuation sparingly. Sentences that are currently too complex can easily be re-cast into multiple sentences or slightly new phrasing.

Are My Headlines Active?
Drawing readers in is even more important on the Web, where the article title may be all some potential visitors have to go off of. Make your headlines interesting and active by including numbers (such as 6Plot Threads Famous Movies Forgot to Resolve), clear indications of the use of the information (such as the “how to” mentioned in the title of this article), and energetic adjectives (such as The World’s Creepiest Plants).

Is My Headline Too Long?
The headline should only take up one line of text, which means that it shouldn’t exceed about 50 characters (assuming you’re using a standard H1 tag size). That’s roughly six to eight words of content, varying pretty broadly dependent on how long the words you use are.

Do I Have an Introduction?
Even with the best headline in the world, you will want to introduce the content to come. This can be anything from a two line summary of what you’re about to say to a five line background on how the industry was started. The point is that you should prepare readers so that your direction and organization are both clear before you present your data, arguments, or other content.

Have I Proofread This Piece?
Nothing says “I don’t care” quite like a blatant tiepoh in the middle of your piece. Most people require at least a couple proofings before they catch all the errors, and even then some are bound to slip through. Make sure you’re taking the necessary precautions by doing your due diligence even after the final paragraph is written; just because you’ve finished writing doesn’t mean the article is complete.

Am I Inviting Feedback?
While it won’t always make sense to do so, most places where you are publishing web content probably allow for reader comments. Capitalize on this by inviting users to leave comments. The most effective approach tends to be providing one or two specific questions to stir conversation and get the ball rolling.

Keep in mind, as a rule, that rules should regularly be broken. What about you? Which of the above rules is it nearly impossible for you to prevent yourself from bending in each article?

Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-checklist-how-to-write-and-format-web-content/28754/