A main business purpose of writing a blog post is to get it shared and linked back to. (Another is to get subscribers and customers/clients.)
So which post types should you write so that more people will share it and link back to it?
Two online organizations, Moz and BuzzSumo, combined their knowledge and data to analyze the shares and links of over 1 million blog posts. Wow! You can read the full article here.
Here’s a summary of the results:
Content Type | Average Total Shares | Average Referring Domain Links |
List post | 10,734 | 6.19 |
Video | 8,572 | 4.13 |
How to | 1,782 | 4.41 |
Why | 1,443 | 5.66 |
Quiz | 1,374 | 1.6 |
Infographic | 268 | 3.67 |
Random posts | 257 | 0.75 |
Who thought that list posts would be that powerful? Well, they are. And video is a close second.
More easy fixes for getting more shares and links
Here are some more points from the study:
- Long content (more than 1,000 words) consistently gets higher average shares and significantly higher average links.
- Surprising, unexpected and entertaining images, quizzes and videos have the potential to go viral with high shares. However, this form of content is far less likely to achieve links.
How about images?
In a separate post here, BuzzSumo gives you awesome techniques for increasing engagement with images.
- Adding relevant images every 75-100 words gets high shares, in fact, double the amount of shares of articles with fewer images and 30 more shares than articles with more images.
- Picture list posts do particularly well on shares, These are list posts that have a picture for every item.
- These principles apply to social media, too. For example, all of your Facebook posts should have an image.
I know, it’s a lot of work!
Want an easy way to create lots of images using a tool you already have? Try PowerPoint for Marketing Graphics!
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1 Response to "7 post types that get the most shares and links"
After reading this post, I’m realizing that my blog could do with a few images to help it out a bit. Thanks for the info.