The surprising science behind choosing the right words

| Social media

The surprising science behind choosing the right words

Have you ever wondered what words work best on social media, in headlines and blog posts in order to get them shared and spread across the web?

Creating shareable content is great and can lead to a huge boost in traffic and increase brand recognition, however it’s not just about writing high quality blog posts but about getting it seen around the web. You also have to think about how you are going to entice users to read and sharing it in the first place.

Just because you’ve managed to write a great article doesn’t mean it will succeed and a bad headline can cause it to fail. Getting the right headline for the article is crucial to its success.

However there is a kind of science to creating the perfect headline for your post, which in fact differs between the social networks.

Motivate your audience into reading and sharing your content with these words:

Blogging

Get people to click on your articles by having the headlines contain these words. These words are the most engaging and eye catching words that will encourage them to share your content:

  • Critical
  • Huge/Big
  • Science
  • Surprising
  • Smart
  • History

Twitter

What words should you include within your 140 character tweets to grab your user’s attention and to encourage them to retweet?

  • Free
  • Top
  • Follow
  • Media
  • Please retweet
  • 10
  • Retweet
  • Great
  • Post
  • Check it out
  • Help
  • Social
  • Social media
  • How to

Facebook

By using the same types of words on Facebook as you do in your blog posts (explained above) for the headline will again entice the user; however what types of articles should you be posting onto Facebook? And what types of articles are the most shareable on Facebook?

What type of content should you be writing and posting?

  • Inspirational
  • Warnings
  • Advice – how to guides are very popular
  • Shocking
  • Gives (offers, deals)
  • Funny 

Luke Stanley