Magic Formula For Creating Link-worthy Content

In the video that comes later in this article, Ralph Wilson and Stephan Spencer, the web marketing and SEO gurus, discuss the importance of social media in the context of getting inward links.

At one point the talk veers to viral marketing, and then comes the comparison with swine flu.

Viral marketing and swine flu! Seem awkward but as I followed them it became clear that the 2 unlikely cause-and-effect ‘cousins’ do in fact perfectly match each other.

Any catch? There is. Let’s look at this formula to begin with (veteran marketers know that already but let’s brush it up).

Viral Marketing = Link-worthy Content + Critical Mass

Now, swine flu, to take the example in the video, is definitely ‘link-worthy’, meaning it has all it needs to connect rapidly. Yet for all its superb ‘linking’ property it can still remain ‘local’ till such time it affects at least those many people that have the potential to spread the disease faster than before.

In other words, once the critical mass of people has the disease, it then becomes viral, fanning out like wildfire.

That’s the concept, but mind you the critical mass comes only after there is something link-worthy. That is to say that short of link-worthy content, no amount of critical mass can possibly trigger a viral spread.

What is link-worthy content?

People often bother about the ‘critical mass’ part of the viral marketing jigsaw. That shouldn’t be. Time was when reaching to sufficiently large number of people was time-consuming and costly. Not anymore.

In an era of multiple social media platform if you are in the game for awhile, spreading your message instantly (and then doing that again and again) isn’t that difficult.

In Twitter for example all you need are catchy tweets within 140 characters like ‘The ultimate link-getting techniques’ to evoke instant curiosity and lead clickers to your blog-article or your video in YouTube.

The question is, “What next?”

Will the clickers stay back in your site for some more time so as to consume other pages, or just click the back-button to vanish into the wilderness? That depends on what you have in your site to present to the clickers.

Since you cannot afford to gift a pot of honey or an ounce of gold to whomever that spends 5 minutes in your site and agrees to click on a certain link that may generate you revenue, the only other safe, non-adult option to increase stickiness of your site is to have great content.

According to experts, a great content that can retain the interest of your viewers a tad longer than usual, and also pull them out of their shells to try out some other pages in your site is a link-worthy content.

How to make link-worthy content?

Opinions are as wide as varying. Stephan Spencer has this extensive article that succinctly explains the process of making link-worthy content and how to take advantage of social media platform, especially Digg.

Headline

Stephan gives the example of a headline formula suggested by Muhammad Saleem, the second ranking top-100 diggers as of this writing. It’s like this:

Headline = Number + Adjective + Key Phrase

Examples:
1] 15 Most Hilarious Comic Books
2] 5 Crucial SEO Steps

If you go around the net and look for blog-posts that have the maximum ‘strike rate’ in terms of being ‘twitted’ or ‘dugg’, chance is their headlines are closely similar to the above formula.

Content

Headlines are like immediate lures to sink your teeth. They are like the beauty of a person on the top. If the page content – the real beauty that ‘lies within’ – causes distaste, you will probably promise to never come back to that website again.

Matt Cutts in his WordCamp presentation on May 30, 2009 outlined that ideally your content should be relevant, creative, interesting, and written frequently. Other experts have likewise felt that creating controversy is a sure way to attract eyeballs.

To take a slightly different perspective, one type of content that always stands tall is its timeless appeal. To give examples I often refer to w3schools and Wikipedia for my countless needs. They may not be very hot from social media perspective, but they have values that stay with them for a long time.

In a nutshell, whatever the course that your content making effort takes, it is wise to remember the famous saying:

Proof of the pudding is in the eating

How wise you are in deciding and expediting the crucial factors of success online will decide how much moolah you can hope to rake in from your website.

Here is the video where Ralph Wilson and Stephan Spencer speak about social media and SEO.