Who stole your shares?

If you ask me what is the most important in a marketing campaign, I would say content is always the core of marketing. Without the core, those gaudy tricks may brings you temporary traffic and explosive increasing shares, but it will not last long. Social sharing is one of the metrics measuring whether people love your contents or not. But something has happened on your shares since 2015.

What happened on your shares?

I read an article few days ago. It alerted content marketers to find new strategies  response to the plummeted social sharing of content, particularly on Facebook. Who stole your shares?
The article listed several reasons. One is the 'content shock'. The rapidly increasing amount of contents is far more than the amount of eyeballs. And one is 'dark shares', which means that people appear to be sharing more posts through email or private messaging. But one of the main reasons is changes in the Facebook algorithm. These changes have not only led to brands and publishers gaining less organic referral traffic from Facebook and less engagement with their Facebook posts, but also made clickbait style headlines far less effective at generating social engagement than they once were.

What's your next step?

In my opinion,these changes are good for the development of content marketing. Even though, they decrease shares on social network tremendously, they just help us filtered out low end contents, which actually are not deserved such high shares. Contents with high quality still get exactly same high shares as usual.
The "cruel" fact forces content marketers not to stick on their old fashion approaches. They must jump out of their comfort zone and stop using clickbait style headlines to attract eyeballs and boost shares. The new social environment prevents most speculations. Content marketers should rethink what is audiences truly want. I think when we buy something or watch something, most of us prefer the high quality. The quality of content is also the key for all marketers to attract eyeballs. No one likes to be cheated. No one likes spending precious time reading dull contents. So try to move your focus to how to create high quality contents.