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.
- Best WordPress plugins – 18 most downloaded WordPress plugins ever
- 8 Thesis theme design tips to make your blog better
- Blog traffic – From 0 to 200.000 visitors, 8 blogging lessons learned
- 10 elements of style of blog post writing
- 24 plugins that I currently use on my blog and why you should use them too
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:
- 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.
- Point out and promote the fact you have social buttons just below the post begging to be clicked and used.
- Share it around the place on all of your social outposts, multiple times over multiple platforms on multiple days. It works, trust me.
- Write headlines like your life depended on it. If it gets clicks you’ll get shares.
- 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.
- 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.
Join thousands of bloggers and get all my blogging tips for FREE! Subscribe to HowToMakeMyBlog via RSS or via e-mail.
If you liked this article, you may also like:
Why I run my blog on Thesis Wordpress Theme
Thesis theme gives my blog a professional, clean, easy-to-read layout and SEO friendly design. Thesis makes it simple to make your own blog unique. See more details and get your own Thesis today.
{ 17 comments }
Thanks for the guest spot Marko!
Much appreciated.
I love candy! And I love articles that have headlines like you mentioned above. If skimming for an answer on google I always click on a list title. It just works. Love your blog by the way!
Why can’t you use these articles to build a blog though. If it has valuable information then what would be the problem?
The reason I think you can’t use these articles 100% to build a blog is because they aren’t very sticky. Stickiness is a term that describes the opposite effect of what I describe here which is getting people to stick around and read your content because it’s just great stuff.
Lists unfortunately, while good at bringing in the traffic numbers and being shareable aren’t as good at creating long term readers. They’re impersonal by nature and most people move on once they’ve finished going through the list.
The only person I can think of that completely proves me wrong is Leo Babauta.. he loves a good list and did a lot of them in the early days of his blog Zen Habits. He’s got some great non-list content though which balances it out.
Hey Josh you do make a good point. Usually when I’m done with a list or how to I might bounce from the site. But as Mars Dorian states, making them more personable could be a good strategy.
A solid balance like you said is probably the best technique.
Heya Josh,
what a coool term, I think I’m gonna “steal” that from you
Judging from what I’m reading here, I make most of my articles as candy bar as possible. I’m working on the concise part, but in terms of structure in design-style, I’m on it. The best candy bar articles I have written so far (according to the retweets) are beautifully designed, concise and valuable. It’s an art to craft those, and I want to get perfect at it.
Reading your comment on Raffledog. I think you can uber-personalize lists as well. I always structure my posts like a list, more or less, and they are very personal. It’s easy on the eye and good for the soul.
I wrote similar article about driving traffic with linkbait (The Oatmeal gets name dropped more than once). I like your ideas better though. Candybar content sounds less obnoxious than “Linkbait”, and seems to focus more on utility than sheer spectacle. Great job!
Sounds like a great concept, but will take a lot of practice to implement. I write the kind of posts that I want to read – right or wrong – all value and not too much fluff.
I do realize though that this kind of content, not matter how useful, does not work for everyone.
I am off to studying your “candy bar” posts – thanks for the examples!
Ana Hoffman
Traffic Generation Cafe
It’s so important to get the headline right, I reckon it’s 50% down to the headline and the rest down to content when the traffic results are in. I use this resource by Chris Garret by the way: http://socialmediaworkbook.com/102-headline-formulas
Great post. I also noticed that I tend to click on things that start with “How to” or “10 things” but never realized it until now.
The only thing that bothered me about this post was the improper use of “it’s”, which happens on a lot of blogs, sites, and forums. The difference between it’s and its is not that hard to learn and the proper usage would be like a candy bar for people like me…
This makes a lot of sense. I’m definitely going to try this with my blog.
Thanks for the comments guys and gals, I’m loving the discussion here.
@Mars – feel free to steal it mate, these concepts are best when they’re spread around. I hear what you’re saying about the art side of it – I’ll pay close attention to some of your articles and see what you mean about the personalization. I think you might be onto something there.
@Alter Imaging – I guess it’s a similar concept to link bait, but more about the structure. Link bait can take on a lot more different forms I think.
@Al – Apologies, I’m working on my grammar
Sometimes it just goes to shit when I’m getting excited about an idea and writing at the same time!
I do agree with this article, but I have to confess that it’s the image of the guy with the rubber bands all over his head and across his face that will be indelibly impressed upon my brain forever.
I can laugh at him, but not without wincing at the thought of how uncomfortable that must be. Crazy photo, man!
One factor which really helps in making your post shareable is Post title. If your title is too lengthy, people might not like to share it and if it’s too short..People will ignore it..And not to forget Content part plays a major role.
thank you for these great idea ^_^
I Love the “Candy Bar” idea. I am fairly new to blogging and I am definitely try this technique. Thanks for the great post.
Candy Bar phrase is great! Definitely can see the benefits of setting up my posts this way.
This is a great article and I’ve loaded a few of the articles you have here in tabs in my browser to check out in a few.
To answer your question there at the end, I actually have what I call a monthly experience and I just enhanced it for everyone signed up to Pop News.
It’s basically a collection of cool blogs everyone likes and why and we all share them. It hasn’t grown so much yet but I figure in time and with enough work and passion it certainly will.