Gone Viral

Four Tips for Creating Your Own Sharable Content on Social Media

You know how useful social media is for building your business. It can be used to reach a broad audience, generate interest, promote services or products, and it costs very little to do well. You also know which social media platforms work best for you and what types of posts get the most attention from your customers. But do you know how to create posts and other sharable content that your customers will share with their friends?

We’ve all seen pieces of content that have gone viral. Sometimes it’s a video of a talking dog or a great article. Whatever it is, people are interested in it and show it to their friends. You, too, can produce your own popular content by researching what works and putting in the time and effort to apply what you’ve learned from that research. Here are four tips to help you create sharable content.

1. Choosing the Right Topic

The first step to creating potentially viral content is to pick the right topic. It can be difficult to find new ideas (especially highly sharable ones), but there are a number of ways to go about choosing a good topic. This might be through trial and error, by researching what types of content are already being shared, or by utilizing tools like BuzzSumo, which help you to learn what content performs best on different networks and platforms. This tool can also inspire new ideas by helping you determine which content on your or your competitors’ website gets the most shares.

2. Picking a Great Image

Images matter on social media. Numerous statistics suggest that all types of visual content (pictures as well as videos) are an effective way to get potential customers to become interested in your posts. Images should be eye-catching and contribute to the image you’re trying to build of your company.

3. Using Human Interest

The majority of highly shared content is “human” by nature. One study found that topics like food, home, and lifestyle accounted for 85% of the world’s most viral content. This means that people tend to share content that reaches them in a personal or human way. If your company provides a product or service that isn’t inherently related to one of these topics, don’t worry! You can still generate posts that relate to your customers personally with a little creativity.

4. Writing a Strong Headline

It probably won’t come as a surprise that catchy titles are an essential part of getting people’s attention. You need to elicit interest, excitement, curiosity and likely also emotion to get someone to click. Good headlines are usually short and focused. If you need some help writing a headline or title, check out this blog post title template for ideas.

In summary, it’s not all that easy to create new and exciting content that your customers will want to share. But with research, planning, and some practice, you can get more shares and, as a result, broaden your company’s reach and customer base.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net