Create Viral Content Using Data in 21 Easy Steps [Infographic]

When a piece of content goes viral it can mean a lot of buzz for your business.

Fortunately, there is a science and strategy to creating viral content.

Today we are going to go over that together.

The areas you want to focus on are:

• Numbers
• Brackets
• URL Length
• Descriptive URLs
• Short Introductory Sentences

Use Numbers In Your Headlines

Headlines are one of my favourite parts of writing copy. Using numbers in your headlines can increase your odds of generating a click by 36%, based on research from Conductor. I have also found that odd numbers perform better than even numbers and this study  backs this up. If you're looking for a really good resource for blog titles, download our Ultimate Blog Title Swipe File.

Use Brackets In Your Headlines

Another element you need to incorporate into your headlines is bracketed text. You may have noticed I used this element in this blog post. Hubspot did a huge analysis of over 3 million headlines and found that it raised CTR by 38%. Try them in your email subject lines too. I have and my open rates have gone through the roof.

Shorter URLs Are Better

You have likely searched on Google before and found a result you liked until you saw the URL slug. That long URL with 4 forward-slashes was unattractive. Keep your URLs short and you will enjoy a higher CTR.

Describe Your Topic in Your URL

What would you rather click on:

website.net/popular-blue-sweaters-for-fall

or

website.net/blog/01-jan-2016/sweaters/blue/season/fall/post?id=33268b_?

When your potential visitor is weighing the options between two sites you want to make the choice obvious for them. Do not confuse them with a bunch of unnecessary text in the URL.

Short Sentences In Your Intro

If you scroll to the top of this post (go ahead and check, I'll wait...) you see that I used short sentences.

And I spaced them out.

Like I'm doing now.

Why do that?

I'm glad you asked.

Do you see how much easier and inviting this is to read?

It puts a "hook" into your readers mouth.

And it reels them deep down into your content. After a reader had read a few lines of text they are more invested in reading your content. Dr John Morkes actually did a study on this. You can read it here.

I'm not going to take everything away from this great infographic from Backlinko. So go ahead and review the infographic for yourself.

As you can see there is a lot of proven science to creating viral content. A good headline goes a long way to helping you so get our blog topic swipe file below.

What was your biggest takeaway from this post? What piece of content have you created that has gone viral? Post your answers in the comments below.