Turning Sensationalized Content into a Resource
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve talked in-depth about types of blog content, and types of social media content.
One interesting observation was that on generic social media sites such as Digg and Reddit, Resource/Educational content typically doesn’t perform as well as Sensational/Entertainment type content does.
On the other hand, after the initial burst of traffic to Sensationalized/Entertainment pieces via social media, traffic typically declines to very low levels, while Resource/Educational based content tends to maintain much more stamina over prolonged periods of time.
Of course, Resource/Educational posts typically take much more time to create, often to the point of seeming prohibitive to many small and medium sized businesses.
Solution:
Launch with a fun News or Sensationalized/Entertainment type post to attract lots of traffic initially, and recruit the readers gained through the social media success of this post to add much more content … hopefully to the point where the post becomes a resource.
Sometimes this is possible organically, but other times an incentive must be given. Incentives not always need be financial either. Some additional ideas are:
Wouldn’t it be great if we could transition a post from a Sensational piece to a Resource piece using little of our own time. Well, it can be done, and here’s how.
At the end of your Sensationalized piece, ask the readers for more examples on the same topic (you may find that you want to reward people to do so). In any case, as social media readers contribute and add more resources, the piece becomes more of a resource. Ultimately, if it was a top 10 list to begin, and ends with 100 … it has now become a tremendous resource.