This just in! According to Hubspot’s most recent “Social Popularity By Content Type” infographic, blog posts are still the kings of content. (No surprises there.) But not all blog posts are created equal. Using social media shares as a metric, Hubspot discovered that there actually is a most shared type of content.
They also found that the 5 main types of blog posts are shared differently across different verticals, and that popularity varies from month-to-month. The data tells a very interesting story.
So, what’s the most-shared kind of content, you ask?
1. Lists (22.45%)
List posts (or listicles, as they’re more commonly called) perform best in June, September and October, earning 25 – 32% of all shares for travel and entertainment verticals.
It’s not too surprising that listicles are still on top (after all, sites like Cracked and Listverse base their entire business model on this open secret), but it is surprising that they’re most popular in travel as well as entertainment. Packing lists and sightseeing lists, maybe?
2. Why (22.32%)
Why posts, or posts that have titles like “7 Reasons Why Kanye West Needs to Grow Up” are narrowingly second place. These types of posts perform best in November, September and October, earning 22% of all shares for news and travel.
3. Videos (18.94%)
Surprise, surprise – videos of all lengths check in at only third place. They perform best in September, November and October, earning 25-32% of all shares for Entertainment and Education.
Which begs the question…why are we spending so much on them, again?
4. How-To (18.42%)
How-to articles, like the kind you’d find on WikiHow, perform best in October, November and August, earning 15-22% of all shares for news, entertainment, and business.
This is surprising because entire sites have sprung up around How-to posts for the same reason that sites like Cracked and Listverse try to capitalize on the list format: perceived popularity. Yet the numbers indicate that How-to posts just aren’t as interesting as we think they are.
Maybe readers are smarter than we think, and only read How-tos from what they know to be credible sources and expert influencers.
5. What-Posts (17.88%)
What-posts define things. They explain complicated ideas, compare products, and tell you what’s what. They also aren’t very popular, coming in dead last in our roundup. These posts perform best in October, November and August, earning 15-26% of shares for news, technology and entertainment.
Takeaways
October is the best month for sharing, period, while July and August are the worst. Which is actually kind of surprising. You’d think that vacation months would see increased social media activity, but this is simply not the case.
How-to posts are not as popular as you might think (perhaps due to oversaturation and redundancy).
Lastly, videos are not as popular as video marketing agencies claim they are.
