5 Tips For Creating Shareable Content on Social Media

By: Lucy Kaplan

May 13, 2019

With hundreds of thousands of articles, videos, photos and other kinds of content competing with your own, how do you break through?

The answer is simpler than you’d think: The key to getting noticed on social media and gain the attention of your target audience is to create shareable posts.

Here are just a few of our tips for crafting the quality posts that social media denizens will share with their networks, who will in turn share with their networks, and so on…

Create content with a specific audience in mind. Marketers used to create nameless personas to represent their target audience. Today, we can learn about real, breathing people and not constructs. All it takes is a bit of social listening to pinpoint the pain points that your business solves. You will also want to employ Google Analytics. There, you can learn more about your audience, including demographics, content preferences and what platforms they spend the most time on.

If all you post is information about your brand, you are going to have a hard time building and nurturing relationships with current and potential consumers. You don’t want to talk at these consumers, you want to engage with them.

That’s not to say that you can never talk about or promote your business. You have to do that. Just make sure that you’re posting about other topics as well and are sharing posts from people within your target audience (when relevant).

Become a member of your target audience. What would you want to read or learn more about? Write that. Publish something that helps people, and your audience is more likely to share that useful post with others.

Make User Generated Content (UGC) a priority. Getting customers involved in creating content is one of the best ways to ensure your own content will be shared.

A company can tell followers how great their products are, but when a friend shares the same message, you are way more likely to purchase from the brand in question. User-generated content results in 29% more web conversions; 92% of consumers turn to people they know for referrals above any other source. It’s hard to deny that UGC moves consumers further down the marketing funnel.

Add social media buttons and a call-to-action (CTA). Make it easy for users to share your posts: Include social media buttons in every original piece of content. No matter the medium (blog, podcast, video, etc.), those buttons should be highly visible.

You can add these buttons alongside your content, at the top of an article or at the very bottom. Ask your web development team to design your site so that social share buttons stick around for the ride as users scroll down.

Another option is to simply ask your reader to share on your behalf using a CTA inline or at the bottom of a post. These brief plugs can range from clever phrases to something in the realm of “Book now.” If readers like what they have just read or watched, they’ll share—especially with a tiny nudge.

Tie to emotion. If you’re like us, you’ve at least once shared a post reading, “I’m not crying. You’re crying!” along with a hashtag to reference a commercial that just aired. (Or a blog post. Or a tweet.) The most successful marketing sparks strong emotional reactions within online communities. Strong emotions are powerful motivators for sharing a piece of content.

Create incentives for sharing your content. People like free stuff. They also like to be acknowledged. Create easy-to-follow contest instructions, encouraging social shares. Some sample copy:

“We will pick a random account at 2pm EST this Thursday that has followed these two steps to win ___! 1. Follow (@yourbrand) 2. Retweet this tweet.”

Follow Lucy: @lucyrk78