Quotes are powerful. They pass the test of time, surpass the expectations of those who said them and even survive the fall of empires. One statement made by a figure in history, regardless of who they are, can resonate just as strongly hundreds or even thousands of years later. Well into the future, you can be sure that a good quote will still be circulating, both from antiquity and from what is today modern.
How can you use this to your advantage?
If you have a social media presence, you will notice that content containing quotes are quick to go viral. But even better, they have a timelessness that allows them to stay there. While relevant to a current event, the entire point behind one of these sayings is that it is applicable well after the events they are applied to pass.
Re-Package Quotes Into Viral Content
Know Your Market
Who are you aiming to market this content to? Not knowing who your chosen demographic is will be a quick path to failure. Viral content has been shared and reshared, capturing the attention of a group so they feel they just have to spread it. If you don’t even know who that group should be, how will they know they were the intended audience in the first place?
Once you know your market, you will also be able to catch their eye through direct reference. One great way is by using modern experts in your field for the quotes. Not only will this stroke the ego a bit and give you a line into a possible connection, but it will make the quote recognizable to others in the industry. Helping to solidify who the message was for and who should be passing your content on.
Another benefit of marketing with quotes is knowing exactly what that group will be looking for in content. You can isolate the perfect statement to share and the perfect way to share it.
Repackage With Fresh Media
Viral Image
If there are quotes on your site already, perhaps from interviews or even reader comments, you can repackage it into new content for a fresh perspective. For example, if you asked for opinions from your readers on a certain issue, you could cherry pick the best. Then take those quotes and make them a text-over-image for easy sharing and appeal to social networks like Facebook and Pinterest.
Quotes look fabulous on the image. Look at how Quoto makes its quotes flye with its picture quotes feature, for example.
Tool: Quotes Cover + pick sources of free blog images for the awesome backgrounds.
Infographics
Another way is by creating an infographic with the details you quote from a past piece of work. Statistics take on a whole new and effective meaning when presented more visually. The same goes for slideshows, videos and other visual media.
Tools: Piktochart and Infogr.am.
PowerPoint Presentations
If you have a series of quotes, they can be easily re-packaged into inspirational presentations.
Tool: Haiku Deck (free).
Videos
Expand Your Reach
Once you have repackaged your content, it is time to expand the reach of that content. Social media is going to be your best friend in this regard. Both Pinterest and Facebook have been mentioned already and they will be your primary networks for gaining visibility thanks to their popularity and frequent use of image sharing. But don’t discount the help that sites like Google+, Reddit and even LinkedIn can provide, depending on your demographic. Then there are other media sharing sites, such as Youtube and Vimeo.
Share all content often and in many places at once. There are tools out there that will let you post to all of your social networks from a single dashboard, such as Hootsuite. While not necessary, it can be helpful and more productive than doing each one manually.
Be sure to encourage your followers to ‘like and share’ your content. Sometimes that little call to action can make all the difference.
Collect and Curate
Start sharing other quoted content. You can do this on most sites, but Pinterest is going to be your main source. Since you are pinning images from other sources, you will be gaining attention each time. People will be more likely to follow your boards when you collect and curate content – and quotes are especially big there.
Do you have any tips for repackaging quotes for viral content?
Confucius Photo via Shutterstock
Image: Quoto
Reach Photo via Shutterstock
Bob Kelly
Well said! Quotes are powerful indeed. I’ve been collecting them for 30+ years and my library includes more than 500 published volumes of them, with about 1.7 million quotes in all. They cover almost every conceivable topic, spanning all of recorded history.
nice post Ann and it’s a tactic that definitely works – I see it time and time again on facebook.
Drives me a little mad though when I see quotes attributed to people that never said them. Particularly when it’s John Lennon!
Bushra Muzaffar
Very good post Ann and very good links
With more and more people using mobile devices, images now play an important role in marketing. This is why it is very important to learn how to play with images and quotes is one of them.
Quotes have become pretty popular over the past couple of years. And I don’t see it waning anytime soon. I like quotes that are simply copied and pasted. But I also really like quotes on images or on a plain background.
Bob: That’s a whole lot of quotes you have there.
Errrmmm, repackaging tip. Maybe create a video where an animal’s ‘saying’ a quote.
Arthur Burlo
I am putting the tips you offered into action on Facebook right now…if I find a great quote for the picture I have in mind. Will let you know how I do.