Truth bomb alert. Other people sharing your content? That’s the most efficient (and free) advertising out there! As soon as your content is shared to someone else’s audience, your reach is significantly increasing. The simple rule: the more shares you receive, the more your profile can grow. The more new pairs of eyes that see your content, the better for you. It’s always a gorgeous thing – that’s why today we’re going to discuss it in detail. It has the underappreciated power of increasing your recognition – even if the people who see your content somewhere aren’t interested in following you right now, if they need your services or piece of advice from your niche later, they’ll be much more likely to think about your profile. It opens up so many opportunities, and it boosts your authority and trustworthiness. Are you struggling to get any shares? Let’s move on to how to make your content more share-friendly!
For example, let’s say you post a carousel on the 5 most surprising Instagram trends that are gaining steam this year. Someone swipes right through all the slides you’ve prepared, reads them all, thinks they’re absorbing, and shares them on their instastories. That’s how it should work. Now the brand new audience (the whole audience of the person who shared it!) knows about your existence and has a chance to get familiar with your content. Something in your carousel appealed to the first follower of yours who has shared it – and there are so many opportunities awaiting there! Other people who see it may feel the same urge to share it further. That’s what we mean by ‘highly shareable posts”. Shareable content is content so intriguing it moves your followers to share it with their peeps.
People share the content they find valuable and worthy of more attention – and only from the sources THEY TRUST. Once you become a trustworthy, reliable information or opinion provider, your community will be much more likely to share what you’re creating. Why? By sharing someone else’s posts, people take partial ownership for whether or not it’s solid and worthwhile. So, let’s dive into exactly why people share others’ posts and how you can use “social media psychology” to create more shareable posts to quicken your profile’s growth!
1. Know YOUR CURRENT audience
The first, most crucial step to creating highly shareable content is researching your current audience’s preferences. Which content format do they enjoy consuming the most? What resonates with them most intensively? Maybe among all the types of content, guides, or short how-tos get the most of their appreciation? Or perhaps it’s reels and carousels? What do they need to learn about? What kind of knowledge do they adore acquiring? Do some research and find out what they’re most interested in, with what they’re willing to engage the most.
You can even watch instastories of a group of your followers (let’s say, make a 10 people research group) – to study what they’re sharing now and what factors have to be checked for them to vote something as worth spreading around!
Figure out what type of content resonates with your audience the most – that’s always the first step. Ask them what they truly want. Keep them involved. When someone feels like they are part of the content creation process, they will become much more committed.
2. Make consuming your content a visual pleasure
We consume content mostly with… our eyes. That’s why it’s so fundamental to make it visually appealing! If you share valuable insights and top expert knowledge, but your graphics are illegible, people are much less likely to engage with them. Everything you want to create has been created before – that’s why you need to come up with a new way to do it. More aesthetically pleasing. Add something less expected. We don’t mean just colorful photos and graphics with nice fonts: take care of your captions as well. Keep your paragraphs pleasant to read, use segmentation methods, to make sure that it seems encouraging at the very first glance!
3. Research what your competitors are doing
Analyze what your competitors are doing online – follow their social media, watch their stories, check their engagement. If it’s high: let’s scrutinize why! Maybe they’re using some content format that you’ve been ignoring, and it’s high time to try it, as it may be a game-changer?
Let’s be clear: no, you shouldn’t copy their ideas 1:1; that’s never the way. However, the line between being inspired and copying is pretty thin: and you don’t want to cross it, obviously. The thing is, you can note the tactics they’re experimenting with and bring it to life on your account – and do it YOUR WAY. Maybe you should be coming up with more reels with tutorials? Or play with carousels more often? Be observant to catch the ideas that could be great for you to work off as well!
4. Take a stand on trending problems and current discussion topics
Sometimes, it’s essential to step out of your “safe topics comfort zone” – and take a stance on current world issues. Support your followers. Let them know that you care about politics, health-related discussions, and ecology. How to find good points of issues? Browse questions and debates on Quora, talk to your friends. Nothing pulls people’s heartstrings like a rational, based on research opinion they feel like they can relate to. And speaking about being relatable…
5. People SERIOUSLY love content they can relate to
People are much more likely to share posts they find inspiring, and they feel that they apply to their own lives or their dreams/plans. It’s remarkably critical for the sense of connection to spring out. How to achieve that? You can be relatable through the tips you share, storytelling, showing your true feelings, speaking from the heart – and how you blend all those things altogether. Psychological research shows (thanks to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania) that people share content on topics that define who they want to be and what their current beliefs are. That’s why it’s so beneficial to create with personality and humanize your ideas (so it’s not only the generic copywriting but much more like a friendly monologue, filled with emotion-evoking accents). Don’t be afraid to show your quirks, personal traits, and values! Add your life experiences wherever you can to make it easier for your audience to connect to your posts emotionally.
From there, we can create content that authentically speaks to your audience and start down the road to creating more shareable posts! Let us tell you: it’s not always so easy to come up with great posts, much less come up with fresh content that your followers are willingly going to spread around. It’s much about analyzing what kind of content your audience loves to see, and then creating that type of creation for them. As Coldplay sings, “nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be this hard” at times, but let us tell you: shareable content will take you FAR, so this effort is definitely worth it in the long run.
