We are big advocates of the ‘content food groups,’ – here’s a general idea:
You can check out the full infographic on our “Crash Course for SEO Marketing” but to get down to it, Fridays are a great day for “fun content” because so many people are winding done and ready to go. Fridays are a great day for “Dessert” content so to speak – sweet and shareable, so people want more and it’s easily digestible, cultural, amusing images, videos, and stories.
So to help get your mind churning here, here are 10 kinds of content that are ‘easily digestible,’ and great for Fridays:
1. Meme Articles
An example of a Meme article on our site “10 Memes Explain Internet Marketing”
Don’t get stuck on the topic – just get started with memes for your industry that you find hilarious and your audience will likely enjoy them as well. As you curate and create memes, consider what elicits a serious LOL and you’re golden. This kind of content is perfect for Fridays.
2. Buzzfeed-style Quizzes
I love these types of content – because not only can you get someone jazzed up about interacting with your site, but you can get them to share the results on social media, which of course is why Buzzfeed spent so much time creating 100’s of these a couple years ago. Though the hay-day of Buzzfeed-style quizzes may have passed it’s still a treasure trove of shareability if you’re doing one for a topic that’s never had one and… it’s gotta be funny and has some kind of pay off. You can do it like the example shared above, where they’re trying to get as many right as possible – or create one where they answer questions about themselves and get the pay-off of “If you were an [insert niche here] you would be a [hilarious creature or thing here]. This can be adapted however you want, but none-the-less the key is people want to take these things to kill time (particularly on Fridays) and it might as well be your content their doing it with.
3. Cartoons
No cartoons our site yet – but check out a couple examples from Marketoonist.
This is a great way to get the word out about your services, though I haven’t tapped into this much. Cartoons just make you want to read them, and if the value of your product or service is highlighted in a humorous way – you’ve got a winning combination.
4. Music Video
I must say, this might be the most time-intensive piece of Friday content you could possibly have, but if you’re looking for “pure sugar and carbs” (to use our content food-groups analogy) this is definitely an enjoyable way to create them. Just be careful not to expect too much, though this kind of content can make your product or service more relatable – Viral is not a real strategy for most small to mid-size businesses, so go light on the budget and time if you can.
5. Quotes
An example of this on our site is “12 Quotes to Help Motivate You for Epic Digital Marketing“.
People love quotes because it’s such an easy way to consume super value-rich bits of content without going super deep in a 2,000-word blog post. Yes, we love long content – but we love sharing value more. If you can squeeze 2,000 words of value into a blog post with 10 quotes – by all means post a shorter blog post, and create some shareable social media assets to help people share your content with the world, because quote images done well do amazing on social media.
6. Spark a Controversy
An example of an attempt at this at least on our site is “Death of The Slogan- How SEO and CRO Have Changed Marketing”
You can also respond to a controversy that’s already going on – just use BuzzSumo or a similar service to look up top content in your industry right now and inevitably there will be something that’s trending because it caused a stir. Don’t shy away from weighing in on things like this if you can add value to the conversation – respond and then share your response in the comments on that post. This can drive traffic and get links to your content, especially if you provide a very thoughtful in-depth piece in a hot debate.
7. Infographics
An example of this on our site is “The ROI of SEO – Infographic” on our Crash Course to SEO Marketing
Likely you understand that infographics can be a great way to get shares and links to your posts, but they also could fall into the ‘easy to consume’ category that would be great to share on a Friday.
8. Reaction Gifs
An example of this on our site is “Harry Potter and the top of Page One – an SEO Journey.”
We took a fresh spin on a genre that has really rabid fans and applied it to our industry. This works best if you have someone who is writing content that really loves that movie/show/artist a lot. Don’t put someone who hates Taylor Swift on an assignment that makes them apply names of Taylor Swift songs to the principles from your industry. – Oops, I think I just got another idea for a blog post.
9. Interviews or Questions for Influencers
Everyone loves their ego stimulated, and influencers are no different. In the content above we probably used the term ‘influencer’ a little loosely, but we did get links from other people around our industry with that post and quite a few shares. Just make sure the people you’re including in your interviews or questions have a sufficient following that they can contribute to the promotion of the content significantly – as that’s a big part of the point to this particular kind of content.
10. Find a way to work in super cute stuff
If you have a pet industry brand it’s not a reach to include adorable animals, but there’s more than one way to skin a cat (maybe a bad choice of words there,) here’s an amazing example of cuteness – used to sell for AT&T in there ‘it’s not complicated’ set of ads.
The trick is to always make sure the cuteness is wrapped up in what you’re trying to communicate, not just separate on its own – with your main point tagging along for the ride. I will say, from the above set of commercials – my wife and I still say “I wish I was back to human” randomly when making jokes to each other so cuteness definitely gets stuck in your head.
I wish you the absolute best of luck for wielding the short attention spans of your average Friday to create epic content for your audience!