Candy Bar Content: Making your blog posts shareable, linkable, pleasing and attractive

Shareable, linkable, pleasing and attractive. Want to take a guess at what kind of blog posts get the most views in the shortest amount of time?

When you think of content, a lot of people imagine troves of information in a compressed 3000 word blogified essay giving the visitor the most useful information around.

Interestingly though, some of our most popular blog posts are actually the ones that are brain dumped and slapped together like a easy mac and cheese microwave meal.

There is a middle ground though (thank god) and it’s an area where you can really capitalize and gain massive amounts of traffic in a short period of time.

What Is Candy Bar Content?

Some of Marko’s most popular posts here on How To Make My Blog have headlines starting with “12 Ways To” and “6 Reasons Why”.

Why is that? What is it about these attractive headlines that pull us in, and what is it about how are these blog posts made that makes them so shareable?

I call them Candy Bar Content.

Candy Bar Content has a unique structure that I’m sure 90% of you have already used without knowing it’s name.

A Candy Bar post is shareable, linkable, pleasing, and attractive.

Attractive because of a great headline that really draws you in.

Pleasing because just like a Candy Bar, it’s information is wrapped nicely, and delivered as promised and in a way that is easily consumed.

Linkable because it’s pleasing and attractive, but also because the information is actually useful.

And …

Shareable, in a “Omg, dude you gotta check this out!” kind of way, because it’s simply that good that you have to show your friends and make them see and understand as well.

So we know the anatomy of Candy Bar Content, but how do you make it more shareable, linkable, pleasing and attractive?

Learn From The Masters

The best way I’ve found for replicating the right kinds of post is to template it on something you know actually works.

Here are 5 fine examples of Marko’s Candy Bar Content that have been incredibly popular that I think you should steal copy learn the format of and adapt your own content to.

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Look At Me! This Is How You Get Attention!

To kick start the natural effects of Candy Bar Content you have to find ways to get it into the right people’s hands and get them to interact with the content.

Here’s 6 ways to kick start the share effect and get people to interact with your Candy Bar Content:

1. Kick start the comments by showing your mates (bloggers or not!) and getting them to comment first. If an article already look popular, people will more likely want to share it further.
2. Point out and promote the fact you have social buttons just below the post begging to be clicked and used.
3. Share it around the place on all of your social outposts, multiple times over multiple platforms on multiple days. It works, trust me.
4. Write headlines like your life depended on it. If it gets clicks you’ll get shares.
5. Contact bloggers directly, become friends. It’s worth connecting, don’t be afraid – we don’t bite. Friends like to share their friend’s work.
6. Leave comments, especially on blogs that utilize the CommentLuv link sharing system. More inbound links to your attractive Candy Bar article the better, you’ll be amazed at how much traffic you really can get this way. Be omnipresent, people will start to recognise you.

Use It, But Don’t Rely On It

Candy Bar Content is the opposite of pillar articles, or cookie content and it works best when used sparingly.

You can’t build a blog on this stuff, but you can use it for a purpose. It’s good at one this, bringing visitors to you.

So what do you have waiting for those visitors when they get there?

A guest post by Josh Kohlbach. Josh is the owner of Code My Own Road a blog about his projects and experiments in creating multiple streams of income. Want to guest post on HowToMakeMyBlog? See more info here.

Image by AndYaDontStop.