Colorful graphic of network of persons interspersed with social media icons.

The rate at which social media users share content has considerably declined over the past few years. CoSchedule gives several reasons why. At the top of the list is the declining number of social media users. Facebook, for instance, lost about two million active daily users over the past year alone. Only 51% of US teenagers aged 13 to 17 use the platform now compared to 71% in 2015. So what is the process for creating shareable content for social media?

Consumers are also more likely to be less attached to brands than ever before. On Facebook, particularly, users are more concerned about personal connections than sharing branded content. They are likely to share light moments with friends and discuss the well-being of their families over the sharing of articles and videos from their favorite brands.

Six Tips to Create Content People Want to Share

Since sharing is still the most effective way to expand your reach and engage with consumers, you need to find a way around the current challenges. Below we share six expert tactics for creating highly shareable content.

1. Learn from the competition

There’s no better place to start than seeing what the most successful brands are doing. What type of content are they creating to get so many shares? Round up the top five brands in your industry with the most shares. Then take a look at the content they’ve shared in the last six months, and identify the high-engagement content. Use this content to inspire your content marketing activities.

2. Adopt storytelling

The difference between storytelling and traditional content marketing is that stories connect the dots for your audience. Rather than creating random posts, storytelling requires that you begin by discussing the customer’s challenges and end by giving a solution. Stories are more appealing and a lot stickier than regular content.

3. Validate customer opinions

We live in a world where everyone craves validation. Everyone is seeking approval, whether for the things they do or those they say. They want to know that someone is listening and agrees with them; that they’re important. As a result, your customers are much more likely to share content that validates their opinions.

4. Appeal to your audience’s values

This is similar to the point above. We all have values that we live by. For instance, some people have very strong opinions on climate change or food preferences. If you want your fans to read and share your posts more, focus on their values and beliefs. Take your time and create content that focuses on topics that align with those values.

5. Be slightly controversial

Benford’s law of controversy states that passion is inversely proportional to the amount of factual information available. In other words, the fewer the facts known to and agreed on by the reader, the more interesting the topic or writing becomes. Things become boring real quick if everyone has the same opinions. Use various viewpoints when creating content to get both sides of a situation.

6. Write valuable content

Even as you seek to appeal to their values and opinions, always write content that adds value to the reader’s life. It doesn’t have to solve all their problems right now. Nothing can. However, through your content, you can inspire them and direct them to solutions to some of the problems they currently face. They’ll see your genuine effort and become emotionally invested in your brand.

It’s About Connecting with Your Fans

What would you ask for if roles were reversed and you were then one consuming the content? Obviously, you’d want to share light moments with your favorite brand. You’d likely also want a brand that shares your values and beliefs. A brand that actively tries to add value to your life. This is exactly what your fans want from you.

At the end of the day, it’s engagement that builds trust and momentum on social media. This means creating shareable content may take more work but can also have much greater returns for elevating your company to be seen well by the largest amount of people possible.


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social media content shareable

How many hours have you spent adding buttons, gadgets and widgets to your new blog or website versus focusing on getting more shares of your content?

You research the right tools, share buttons, share bars, analytic tracking tools and more. You install them with a hope and a prayer that someone somewhere is going to use them.  However, unfortunately many business leaders find they don’t get used. The share buttons sit on their site with the lonely zero or default +1. Chances are your pocket book or wallet might be feeling a little lonely too.

What if you took the same time you spend on the share bars, share buttons and tools and instead first focus on something worthy of a share? I know it sounds like a crazy concept because after all it’s far easier to focus on the bright shiny objects, geeky tools and data analytics.

Trust me, I am a data junkie and could literally spend all day helping my clients dig into the heads of their target audiences with a goal of embedding their brand in their brains!

Is your content worthy of a share?

If you really want success with online marketing and social media you must at some point provide relevancy. Yes, you can avoid this for a short period of time. You may be able to sell your boss and executive stakeholders on the number of retweets, likes and pins. Your board may get excited by the super star retweet you get from the latest singer rockstar from American Idol.

However, at the end of the day the same question still remains… what is your content doing for me? What is it doing for your audience? What is it doing for your business, stakeholders, shareholders and customers?

Content marketing defined…

Let’s take a look at the definition of content marketing.

Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to engage current and potential consumer bases. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-qualityrelevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving brand loyalty.
*Source: Wikipedia

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attractacquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
*Source: Content Marketing Institute

For more clarity on defining the term, check out what is content marketing.

The words that matter. Make note of these words highlighted above. Notice any themes?

I know you are all smart enough to understand where I am going with this. You know what the words above mean.

So I am going to ask you the same questions… is your content relevant, engaging, high quality, valuable, actionable? Is it content that is going to inspire me to give you my attention? Will it inspire me to take action? To engage with you and your brand? Is it going to inspire me to take an action that will benefit you and your  business?

Well, I can tell you that if you are not thinking about the above words on a daily basis as they relate to your business, your Facebook pages, your tweets and your email blasts, then the chances you are going to attract me, inspire me to buy anything from you are few and far between.

10 tips to Create Share Worthy content 

1. Learn, download and embed the definitions and words above into the dna of your brain.

2. Take the same words and embed them into the DNA of your marketing and business plans.

3. Don’t let your relationships turn all digital. Talk to your customers, partners, stakeholders and prospects in real life. Get that eye to eye, hand to hand connection. Get in their head and in their heart. The people in your online and offline communities are truly the heartbeat of social media.

4. Don’t assume you know what you don’t know. If you haven’t asked your audience what they want the past two years I’d suggest you ask. You might be surprised in the result.

5. Set goals and objectives for measurement. You can’t optimize, monetize and measure what you do not track, so set goals and objectives early.

6. Be honest with your internal skill set. If you don’t have the right skill set internally don’t be afraid to outsource. There are many awesome writers who are affordable and can often deliver much higher quality work than what you can do yourself at a lower cost.

7. Get out of your box. If you have had the same team for the past few years, then you need to get an outside opinion. Even our agency occasionally hires an outside writer to help us with new perspectives and ways to connect with our audiences. A third or fourth eye can never hurt.

8. Be patient and invest time. It is going to take time and resource to create relevant, engaging and valuable content. Do not expect overnight results. Build your plan and work yer plan as granny would say! You’ll eventually get there.

9. You will never know what you can do if you don’t try. What’s the worst thing that will happen if you put a little more effort into your content marketing game? Can’t be much worse than those lonely share buttons can it?

10. Don’t be afraid to do the happy dance. Keep your head up. We all started somewhere. I can still remember the first days of launching my blog with a hope and prayer I would get one or two retweets. I can remember doing the happy dance when I started hitting 10 retweets a day. Set realistic goals and celebrate your milestones, not someone elses!

Free Resources:

Check out this free whitepaper for 15 Tips to Stomp Status Quo & Zoom Your Brand! Content is more than words. To get more shares of your content, your content must embrace, support and invigorate your brand. It must inspire your audience to listen and engage in what you have to say!

Another well written post with lots of insights for you is the content marketing guide by Bashar Sunny. I recommend it.

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