Co-authored with Max Thorpe.

What is the use of writing content for your blog if nobody is going to read it? A recent study composed by Buzzsumo and Moz indicated that out of a sample of 100,000 internet articles, over 75% had zero links referencing to them, and they were also poorly shared.  This is not necessarily a bad thing if the content was intended for a small audience, but we suspect that most marketers want their content to be shared, and shared widely. 

According to the study’s author, Steve Rayson, the lack of sharing suggests that the majority of internet content produced is either poor quality or is not promoted efficiently.  In fact, most marketers may simply be wasting time, money and, most importantly, opportunity.

Marketers, all marketers (e.g. brands, retailers, publishers), need to understand their audience and notice what’s resonating with them so that the content they create is not just relevant to their audience (prospects and consumers) but also worth sharing. 

Having good content is not enough, however, to make producing the content worthwhile. Marketers must also think carefully about how they promote their content. According to eMarketer, Fractl, and BuzzSumo, as published by Statista, it is much more likely for an article to be viewed and shared if it is promoted via social media.  Facebook is currently the leading platform for sharing written content, over 70% of shared written content is referred from Facebook rather than Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, or LinkedIn[1].  As a side note, we recommend that companies not just push content to Facebook, but also link back to their owned properties.  This something we refer to as establishing the connectivity keystone and the owned media causeway.

Poor content and the the difficulty of getting it amplified and shared poses  a difficult challenge for marketers.  There is a lot to producing quality content and getting it out there.  Marketers must create content that will appeal to their desired target market, publish it and get it shared in order to  ultimately increase viewership, drive brand awareness, engagement, and increase sales for their company.

We recently came across a great tool that marketers can leverage to help with the most important part of the content process; understanding what appeals to people.  The tool, Buzzsumo, helps marketers discover the types of content that people actually care about and want to engage with.

Buzzsumo is a six-person company founded in March 2014. It is headquartered in London with staffing in Spain and New York.  Although it may be a small company, Buzzsumo has had tremendous success, it has 130,000 subscribers, 1,400 customers, and is already profitable.  Rather than paying for advertising, Buzzsumo built its client base primarily from referrals and personal connections with top influencers (like us). Contrary to competitors like focuses on content and how it performs across the Internet in terms of social sharing and links. Thus whilst it tracks social activity the focus is on the content including its format, length, author, topic etc.

Steve Rayson, Director at Buzzsumo, addressed the problems that Buzzsumo solves, saying “Buzzsumo helps its users write content that will resonate with an audience and create engagement”. The tool helps its users see what content people are sharing and how to write content that will also get shared.  Go check out their recent study, from what we see and hear, he is 100% right.

As Cicero, famous Roman philosopher, once said, "If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words." With that in mind, we took a look at Buzzsumo to see what’s trending with mobile marketing. We found results on mobile marketing optimization, mobile marketing sales, and shopper engagement via mobile smart phones.  This gives us, the mCordis team, an idea of what content captures our target market’s interest. 

Content is critical to having effective communication with your audience, be it a consumer, shopper, investor, employee, etc.  But lets not forget, content for content sake is not the goal.  It is just the start. Content should not be simply about broadcast messaging, your focus should be on using content to stimulate a conversation.  As the author and blogger, Cory Doctorow, has notably said “content is not king, conversation is king.”  And, as Paul Berney, principal at mCordis stated, "Effective communication is essential to any  successful human endeavor". If you want to be effective, it all starts with content that matters.  Buzzsumo can help you with this.

[1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/267140/social-sharing-referral-traffic-publisher/