The aim of almost all social media postings is to achieve that lofty goal of ‘shareability’ whereby posts, images and content are shared by people with no commercial interest in your business simply because they’re funny, touch an emotional note or have other entertainment value.
So how can you achieve this, and why is it important?
Why is shareability important?
Shareability is what gets your content seen beyond the people who have already chosen to follow your brand on Twitter. While your followers on Twitter may be relatively loyal customers, or know your business well, by going beyond that you can reach new markets; and the way to do that is if existing followers share with their friends and family.
On some social media channels – especially Facebook – impressive algorithms stop dead in their tracks any posts which attempt to sell to followers without paying for the privilege. It’s therefore important to have interesting content that isn’t directly selling your products; you can complement this with paid for advertising, but simply posting “buy X product” is a good way to ensure that very few people ever see your post.
Play with emotions for shareability
You can check up on what we’re about to say with a simple test. Take a look down your personal Facebook and Twitter feeds and identify which of your friends have recently shared posts from other people or pages. We can guarantee that almost all of them will meet the criteria of being emotionally engaging, whether they’re funny or touching.
As in life, engaging peoples’ emotions with posts that tickle their funny-bones or tug on their heartstrings is a great way to engage with them, so create fun, jokey content which features your products or services in a more roundabout way. Your content will have a greater degree of shareability, but your marketing message will still get out there.
Pay for shareability
Even if you’ve created some truly hilarious or heart-warming content, sometimes it just doesn’t reach as far as you’d like. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram offer advertising from just a few pounds, and boosting your post by just £5 or £10 can vastly increase how much it’s shared – if you target the right audience.