If your brand has any hopes of producing viral content, it will have to be appealing enough to audiences that they feel compelled to share it with others online. Fortunately, sharing content is so easy these days that most digital content destinations have turned the share function into a button. Unfortunately, producing something that effects people so profoundly is getting harder every day. The flood of online video production, blog posts, photos, and infographics people face every day has all-but numbed audiences to the impact of certain video editing. As such, producers must go above in beyond in their content and hit all the right notes in order to inspire their audiences to sing praise.
In a recent entry on the Social Media Marketing blog, Luis Oliveros highlights three qualities of highly sharable content. The qualities might not surprise you, but that doesn’t mean these qualities have not been overlooked at some point.
Emotionally Driven Content
Any content that genuinely triggers an emotional response in viewers is significantly more likely to inspire shares. In fact, if your content manages to evoke emotion, sharability is just about guaranteed. However, the nature of your audience’s emotional response is important too. People will be less likely to curate content if it makes them upset.
Exclusive Content
People want to feel part of a community, especially secret communities or clubs that reward membership. While this doesn’t mean you should exclude potential audience members from certain online channels, give your Twitter followers something different than your Facebook followers. Not only will this give people the sense that following certain channels is worthwhile, they might want to share the material with people who aren’t on those channels.
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
Luis explains this principal best.
Hearing news from a good source, as reputable as they may be, is good. But hearing it straight from the people involved is even better. Interviews with industry leaders, celebrities, and other important personalities can generate good site traffic and get shared a lot online, provided that the content writer knows the right questions to ask. Along with this, content developers can also write articles to feature these personalities, or even directly have them pen guest blog posts for the sites.
