The art of producing high-quality content is a must have component of every marketing strategy, irrespective of its form, be that blog articles, social media posts, advertorials, or other. Nevertheless, the number of companies that succeed in producing engaging and memorable content over social media is limited.
And any content that fails to meet a certain level of engagement will never fulfill the KPIs established in the very beginning. In this article we are analyzing a few practical tips to post shareable content on social media, with focus on Facebook.
1. Create valuable information
The golden rule of Facebook, and social media in general, is that, if you want to create shareable content, then you should focus on producing valuable information as part of that content. If you just write about superficial things and don’t put enough effort into it, then your Facebook followers will most probably not be sufficiently engaged. This will generate a very low level of user actions on your posts, such as likes or shares, which in the end may produce you only disappointment and frustration.
So, take the necessary time to do thorough research over the topic of your content, and invest sufficient resources into quality creation. For example, valuable advice over any given topic that is related to your business, and which users can integrate into their practice, would definitely generate interest. And even more, it would determine them to come back to your Facebook page for more similar advice.
As example, let’s say that you are a ski instructor and would want people to interact with your Facebook page, which could generate you more business. Content that could help you on this would be useful information around the practice of skiing, such as: how to choose the perfect equipment for their level, tips and tricks about starting skiing smoothly, or similar. To figure this out in more detail, here are some tips of such posts by Adventure Sports Network on Facebook.
So don’t resume just to general information, and be generous in important insights over skiing as a sport or hobby, offering your potential clients the opportunity to see that you are truly a professional. This would bring them a nice flavor of your practice style and would assure them that you have indeed a solid experience in practicing your profession.
2. Arouse emotions
Among most important triggers that determine people to engage in conversations over social networks are emotions, which create psychological patterns. These are basic needs that every human being integrates and is manifesting when aroused by different triggers. Such needs are generally those of:
- communicating with others and nurturing relationships;
- getting social approval – this includes belonging to groups, expressing ideas and emotions and obtaining affirmative feedback;
- contributing to society, helping others and sustaining ideas according to their personal beliefs;
- feeling joy – most of us use Facebook feeds for relaxation or inspiration, which in the end generate joy and happiness.
So, before putting together a Facebook post or ad, take the necessary time to analyze how you can use that content to induce any of the above emotions. Just one of these emotions can easily make users of Facebook share your digital content with their friends, and generate viral growth of your exposure.
You can use many types of content or tricks, such as addressing questions at the end of your copy to engage opinions on topics that you know your clients love to talk about, or provide instructions on how to solve issues that people are intrigued about – e.g., how to grow an avocado from its kernel, how to make your own furniture, etc.
As for other tips to post shareable content and get people involved in your Facebook campaigns may be the use of contests, polls, funny videos or pics of animals, etc.
And of course, one of the most important tips to post shareable content is this: the message can decrease in power without a proper structure.
3. Put structure into it
Plentiful information is being shared over the internet every day on millions of topics, which includes also social media platforms. People are continuously bombarded by rich amounts of information, which requires significant effort of their brains for assimilating the information that is particularly helpful to them.
As a consequence, human brains have developed the ability of reading and filtering that information very quickly. So, if you would like your content on Facebook to get people’s attention, you definitely need to work on structuring it. In practice, this would involve:
- limiting your text and making use of bullet points and numbered lists;
- instead of text, where possible use infographics or any other type of visual content;
- using educational video content or memorable photos;
- use titles and headers that can resume or highlight takeaways.
Try to keep your copy as concise as possible, and, when there is much information to be communicated, try to use more engaging means, like photos, videos, infographics, or any type of content that’s easier to integrate.
People are not following you if you don’t follow their attention!