Most businesses dream of creating content that goes viral, but they often struggle to get even a single share of their posts. Creating content that is shareable is critical to having long term success on social media and growing your following.
Without shares and other forms of interaction, it’s tough to get your content in front of people who aren’t already following your account. That’s why creating shareable content is so important and why it can bring so much value to the business.
Content that Makes the Sharer Look Good
Research has shown that the number one reason that dictates whether or not a person will share the piece of content is how that share will make them look. If your content is funny, then they want to share it because it makes it look like they are funny, if it’s empathetic then by association it makes them look like a good person.
Ask yourself, would you share your content? If you can ask yourself this every time you create something and then decide what you would think of somebody else sharing that type of post, you can get a better idea of if it’s shareable or not.
You should aim to create content that reflects well upon the sharer; this is particularly important when you’re choosing the title of the post because the sharer’s friends are only likely to see your headline.
Already Shared
Social validation is when we see that a post has already been shared by people in the past. This makes us more likely to share the content because the idea of sharing it has already been validated.
To get around this, you can ask your friends and employees to share your social media posts as soon as they go live. Not only will this help to spread your reach, but it’ll also provide some social proofing that can encourage people to share your content.
Provides Value
The third tip for creating shareable content is to make sure that whatever you’ve created provides real value. This could be through humor, entertainment or information. However, it needs to be truly valuable; it can’t just be slightly valuable.
People like to share posts that they think will also provide value to other people, so the content needs to have the breadth to it and to apply to a reasonably large group.
If you’re unsure about the value of your post, then you should try asking a few people, one who is an expert in the niche, one who is an amateur and one who isn’t in the niche. This should give you a variety of opinions and help you to refine your content ideas.
With more and more garbage content polluting the internet you need to do far more to stand out. Make sure that you’ve covered everything you can think about the topic to create the most mind-blowing piece of content available on that specific topic.
Rich Content
The text is great, you’re reading this after all, but video and graphics can go a long way to adding extra stimulus and value to your audience. It also makes content that is much more shareable. Most people on social media aren’t in the mood to read huge posts, so if you want to go viral, you probably need to create a visual version.
This can be included as part of a post that also includes a text version, or the video itself could be the content. The right choice is going to depend on the social media network that you’re primarily using to promote the content.
Platforms like Twitter tend to do better with video whereas your Facebook following might be more inclined to read a longer post.
Easily Consumable
Finally, it’s critical that whatever form of content you create is easy for the user to consume. In practice, this means that it should be visually pleasing but also simplistic and entertaining to read.
Put yourself in the shoes of somebody scrolling through their social media feed, you’re probably in a relaxed mood and don’t want to have to break out a dictionary to understand a post. No, you want something that’s easy going and quick to consume.
With this in mind, you need to ensure that you’re not writing in huge chunks. Keep your sentences to a maximum of two lines and paragraphs less than four lines. This helps to break up the content and make it more legible, particularly on mobile devices.
As always, you should ensure that you’re using high quality images that add value to your post and can help to explain the post in more detail.
Conclusion
The content which gets the most shares isn’t the result of luck. It’s the result of careful planning, and high quality content combining to create a post that adds value to the user reflects well on them and is easy to consume.