What if there was an actual formula for content marketing success? It’d be the best thing for marketers since Google invented the search algorithm. The crew at Fractl set out to not only create that formula but also share it with the world. And we’re sharing it with our world (you guys, ’cause you’re our world <3) right here.
Fractl started by analyzing 759 content marketing campaigns. They grouped those campaigns into three buckets:
- High success: more than 100 media placements and/or 20,000 social shares
- Moderate success: Between 20–100 media placements and/or between 1,000 and 20,000 social shares
- Low success: Fewer than 20 media placements and/or fewer than 1,000 social shares
After bucketing those campaigns, they noticed that their top campaigns had at least one of three things:
- They built an emotional connection with their audience
- They had an element of surprise
- Top campaigns appealed to a broad audience
And it wasn’t a small difference either. Campaigns with an emotional hook earned 70% more media pickups and 127% more social shares than campaigns that lacked that emotion. Campaigns with an element of surprise earned 39% more media pickups and 108% more social shares than campaigns without surprise.
Here’s the secret sauce, though. When all three of those things were combined, their results were crazy huge! Campaigns that had all three of those had an average of 207 media pickups and 25,017 social shares. DAAAAAANG!
Having trouble thinking of a piece of content that hits all three of those? No worries, here are some examples:
- Drinking from a refillable water bottle could be worse than licking a dog toy
- More American high school students smoke pot than binge drink, report says
- Here’s which states post the nastiest tweets
- Online fast food calculator reveals how long you need to run or swim to be guilt-free (and it’s more than you think)
Runningoutofroomhere, but we have to note that without exceptional media outreach, your campaigns will probs just fail before they get anywhere.
If you couldn’t tell, this is one in-depth article, so keep on readin’ for way more knowledge.
