Creating Shareable Content
What Does Shareable Mean? How Do I Create Content To Catch On?
The name of the is content. The age of “viral” videos or photos no longer exists; there’s just too much good content and standing out amongst the crowd is the most challenging hurdle marketers face today.
There are however some steps you can take to ensure your content stands out amongst the rest. With all of the clutter in today’s social space, it’s important that you add value to the experience of your audience above all else. And here are six traits from Jonah Berger’s book, Why Things Catch On:
- Creation of Social Currency
- Leveraging Triggers
- Activation of Emotion
- Public Facing
- Practical Value
- Storytelling
Jonah goes into much more detail in his book, but at a high level these six traits provide a significant amount of value to any one piece of content.
Social Currency creates a foundation for people to talk. Talking about cool or funny things makes people seem, “in the know” and that in itself is a creation of social currency. If your content can make somebody laugh, or sound knowledgeable then you’ve created social currency.
Triggers are ideas that create frequency and allow users to keep a specific topic or conversation top of mind. Creating a trigger helps your brand stay relevant for longer by creating an impression worth remembering.
Emotion evoking content is some of the strongest content a brand can create. Tapping into the psyche of your audience builds more than just a “like” on a post, but a relationship that carries much more in weight.
Public Facing strategies are utterly important. Creating something that’s supposed to be shared builds into the virality of the content.
Practical Value allows people to be “smart” or “knowledgeable” which impacts social currency. Creating content with practical value adds to the “share factor” and may drive users to post on their own social channels.
Story Telling is the fastest way to the hearts and minds of your audience. Building a strong narrative creates a tie into each of the categories above and will in-turn have lasting effects on your audience.
At the end of the day, you don’t need EVERY single trait in your content. At that point, you’re trying too hard. It is, however, important to have perspective on all of the traits
Find out more at Honeycommb.
