Study shows shareabability of content can be correlated with word count
An extensive content marketing study into the sharing habits of internet users has shown long-form content of 1,000 words and more to be more likely to be shared by readers than shorter pieces.
Study shows long-form content is more shareable than shorter pieces
The discrepancy was identified by BuzzSumo and Backlinko following analysis of 912m blog posts published between October 2017 and October 2018, which showed longer articles generated 56% more social shares on average.
This scaling trend was observed to further extend to posts of 3,000 words and more, which raked in 77.2% more referring links.
Drilling further into what makes an article shareable the study showed that headlines containing a question mark generated 23% more shares than simple statements while the date of publication also played an appreciable role, with shares varying by as much as 1.45% between different days.
Of those sharing content, a disproportionate amount is attributable to a relatively small number of ‘power posts’, with a whopping 75% of all social shares attributed to a top performing tier of just 1.3% of published pieces.
Despite these sharing tips, the authors note that the vast majority of online content fails to achieve a single backlink, with just 6% of articles generating one or more link from another website.
A 2018 Content Trends Report by BuzzSumo found social sharing had reduced by half since 2015.