Your Shareable Content

Written by: Gary Horsman

Your Shareable Content

You may spend time creating delightful content but do you help to make your content shareable? Delightful content is valuable. However, if your content is shared by others it becomes even more valuable. When shared it helps to spread the word about you, your business and your value.

Whether a tweet, a blog post, a video or a status update, everyone wants their content to engage with their audience.

For organizations and pros, that engagement has very practical value.

Here are some points for you to consider to help you to get your content shared.

1. Connect with Emotion

It is helpful to know the emotional triggers of your audience so that you can leverage your social media content to connect with your audience.”

What is your audience concerned about? What are their desires? What photo or graphic content can you use to help engage emotionally?

A significant amount of content gets shared because it’s fun or emotionally appealing and because sharing it fulfils an emotional need or desire.

Emotional needs could be:

• Looking smarter
• Being helpful
• Adding some fun
• Being thoughtful and kind
• Helping people to get to know you

2. Engage with your Audience Using their Lens

Relate your content to your audience. Do not put your product or service in the center of your content. Put your audience in the center and then craft content that connects with your audience by helping them understand how what you do or what you offer relates to them.

To use the lens of your audience means that you need to know your audience well. When you create content – with part of the objective to have it shared by others – then you need to know what will trigger them to share it.

If you know your audience then consider how to share your content will help the person sharing to:

• Look more intelligent
• Be helpful
• Add some humor
• Generate some ideas
• Look more interesting

Put yourself in the place of anyone in a position to share your content. Think about how you can make it easier for them by looking through their lens and helping them to achieve their objective when they share your content.

3. Bond Using Stories

I have found that content that is in the form of a story is popular online. People love stories and a good story can help to tell a bigger story about how your organization, product or service helps your audience. Storytelling can help to give your organization a unique personality and this helps to differentiate your organization.

Can you tell a success story about someone that your target audience can relate to? Can you tell a story about how your service helped someone just like your ideal client? Put the example of the ideal client and how they were successful at the center of your story.

4. Contribute to Community

If your content can make a contribution to a community that is associated with your target audience then this community is more likely to share it. I am a member of Rotary International and if I can write a post that supports the activities or thinking of this specific community and my business then it is more likely to be shared. If I try to get this community to share information only about my services then the liklyhood of it being shared decreases. If I can be genuine and helpful to a community and provide some valuable insights about the value of my service to the audience then this will help my content to be shared.

5. Align with Your Audience and a Specific Situation

If you know your audience well and know of a specific situation that already has the attention of your audience then create delightful content that leverages the situation. Do this in a way to be helpful. Provide your insights. Suggest a solution. Provide some entertainment based on the situation. Tell a story that relates to the situation.

If you audience is already engaged in a specific situation and you tap into this properly then this will help support the sharing of your delightful content.

Here is a link to a Prezi (a presentation) on more thoughts about social media marketing. If you create delightful content then the next step is to get people to share it.