Everyone wants their business to be successful. Everyone wants as many people as possible to share their message, to have it go “viral”. Everyone wants their content to be seen by as many people as possible, but what that really means is that you need your content to be shared by as many people as possible — have a good social media marketing.
Some people obsess about page views and “likes”, but for me a better metric of my content’s success is not how many liked it but how many shared it. It’s sharing content that ups your brand visibility and gets your message out there. This is especially crucial when you rely on others to do your marketing for you.
It’s Not How Many Likes You Get, It’s How Many SHARES.
Getting your content get shared seems easy to some people, and it seems impossible and mysterious to others. While nothing is guaranteed, there are social media marketing tactics you can use to make your online content as contagious as possible. What’s needed is some understanding of human psychology, plus some thinking about the what, why and when of social media marketing and word-of-mouth advertising.
A few essential rules for effective social media marketing include the following:
“Sharing is caring.”
We share to convey something about ourselves. Our choices define us, and in some ways so does what we put out in the social universe. We want to appear useful, an expert, liberal, patriotic, smart, clever, successful, kind, mean, sexy, anything. People share content as a sort of social currency. When someone finds something remarkable, they want to share it because it reflects positively on him or her.
Content triggers: “That reminds me…”
Perhaps one of the best things to build into your content is a commonplace, reoccurring environmental trigger. It doesn’t have to be done on a specific day of the week. Posting something that triggers an individual’s mind to think of something else while essentially relating to your content can build trust in your cyber relationship. It could be a post that is from high school or an old movie clip, etc.
“That’s so beautiful; I’m tearing up (sniff, sniff)”
Another thing that can increase your post to be shared is emotion. People share stories and videos and facts that arouse emotion in themselves — and they assume will do so other in others as well. But not all emotions are equal in the viral department. It needs to be a strong emotion that puts the pulse to racing, the eyes to watering, or the throat to lumping. To up the contagious factor, the content should inspire awe. Or it should arouse anger, or laughter. Often the content we share is remarkable. It has to inspire us, floor us, make us laugh, or surprise us in a big way. Content that makes us sad or happy might work, but awe and anger have proven to be much stronger emotional catalysts for social media marketing.
“You’re welcome.”
People like to bond over things they can be inspired by or indignant about together, but they also like to share things that think will prove valuable to others. We like to be of use, to share practical information. Of course, to maximize your social media marketing, the viral potential should have the practical information needs to be of use to lots of people, or at least to a good portion of the audience you’re trying to reach.
Human beings like to hear, create, embellish and share stories, and the Internet has given that uniquely human predilection a quantum leap by making countless more stories available to countless more people. That’s our double-edged sword. Our stories are theoretically available to a nearly limitless audience – but so are everyone else’s. Our stories have to cut through the clutter. Our stories have to be better, more useful, more inspiring, more relevant, more moving, more funny, more powerful, more shareable.
When crafting or curating content for social media marketing, keep one or more of these five attributes in mind so that those who see it will in turn help make it available to as many people as possible.
With Love | Nikki xo