Creating social media content is easy. Creating social media content that someone voluntarily sends to a friend, reposts to their own audience, or drops into a group chat with a comment like “This is exactly what I was talking about” is much harder.
That difference matters.
Likes and views can certainly be useful indicators of performance, but sharing represents something deeper. When someone shares your content, they are essentially putting their own reputation behind it. They are saying that the post is funny enough, useful enough, interesting enough, beautiful enough, or relevant enough to deserve someone else’s attention.
That makes shares one of the most valuable forms of engagement available on social media.
So how do you create content people actually want to share? It usually has less to do with producing more content and more to do with understanding why people share things in the first place.
Start With the Person Who Will Share It
One of the easiest mistakes to make in social media marketing is starting with the question, “What do we want to say?”
A better question is, “What would our audience want to pass along?”
Those two questions can lead to very different content.
A company might want to tell everyone about its newest service, its latest award, or a product feature that employees are excited about. The audience, however, may be much more interested in a useful shortcut, an amusing observation, a surprising statistic, or an answer to a problem they regularly encounter.
Shareable content usually provides some kind of social value to the person sharing it. It helps them entertain, educate, inform, encourage, warn, or connect with someone else.
Before creating a post, imagine a person encountering it while scrolling. Then imagine that person thinking of someone else.
Who would they send it to?
Why?
If there is no obvious answer, the content may still perform well, but it probably has less potential to spread organically.
Give People Something Worth Passing Along
Useful content remains one of the most reliable forms of shareable content because it gives people a simple reason to distribute it: someone else might need this.
That usefulness can take many forms.
A restaurant could post a quick guide to reheating takeout without ruining it. A photographer could explain how to avoid harsh shadows when taking portraits outdoors. A real estate company could share a checklist for preparing a house before an open house. A software company could demonstrate a shortcut that saves users ten minutes every day.
The key is specificity.
“Five Marketing Tips” is extremely broad.
“Five Things to Check Before You Spend Money Promoting an Instagram Post” immediately feels more practical.
Useful content works particularly well when it solves small problems. You do not have to reinvent an industry every Tuesday afternoon. Sometimes the most shareable post is simply the one that teaches someone how to do something faster, cheaper, easier, or better.
Make Your Audience Feel Seen
Another powerful ingredient in shareable content is recognition.
People love encountering posts that accurately describe something they experience but rarely hear articulated.
This is why highly specific jokes, observations, memes, and industry humor spread so easily. A post about “working from home” may receive some engagement. A post joking about joining a video meeting and suddenly realizing your camera is already on creates a much more recognizable moment.
The reaction you want is: “That is absolutely me.”
Brands can use this principle without trying desperately to become comedians. You can create relatable content around frustrations, routines, habits, expectations, awkward moments, misconceptions, or little victories that your audience understands.
The more specifically you understand your audience, the easier this becomes.
Generic content speaks to everyone.
Shareable content often feels as though it was written for one particular person.
Create an Emotional Reaction
Information gives people a reason to pay attention. Emotion gives them a reason to act.
That does not mean every post needs to make people laugh hysterically or question the meaning of existence. Even relatively small emotional reactions can increase the likelihood that someone shares something.
Curiosity works.
Surprise works.
Nostalgia works.
Inspiration works.
Amusement works.
Even mild disbelief can work extraordinarily well.
Consider the difference between posting a straightforward historical photograph and posting the same image with the caption, “This is what a typical office looked like before computers took over every desk.”
Suddenly, the photograph has become a window into another era.
Someone might share it with coworkers. Someone else might send it to a parent who remembers offices like that. Another person might comment about something visible in the background.
The image has become a conversation rather than simply a piece of content.
Pay Attention to the Image
The picture is often the first thing someone notices about a post. Even if the useful part is in the caption, the visual can give them a reason to read it.
Photography, illustrations, screenshots, infographics, and video frames all have their place. Choose the format that helps explain your particular idea. A screenshot with one setting circled may be more useful than a beautifully designed graphic.
High-quality stock photos can help when you need a polished image quickly, especially if the subject would be difficult or expensive to photograph yourself. Spend some time choosing. The first search result might show the right subject without capturing what you want to say about it.
Take workplace burnout. There is no shortage of photographs of people holding their foreheads in front of laptops. An empty office late at night could express the same idea in a quieter, more interesting way.
Consider the feeling you want the picture to convey. That can give you a better starting point for an image search.
Give the Post a Strong Opening
Someone scrolling through a feed has plenty of other things to look at. Give them a reason to stay with your post.
A useful observation can do the job. For a photography post, you might begin: “This mistake is almost invisible until you know what to look for.” A website design post could open with: “If your website suddenly feels outdated, this might be why.”
Both openings leave a question to answer. The reader knows the subject and has some idea of what they will learn by continuing.
Use that approach carefully. If you promise to explain a mistake, show the mistake and explain how to fix it. Curiosity can get someone to read a post, but the answer needs to justify their time.
You can also start with a question your customers already ask. Their wording may be clearer and more inviting than the headline you spent an hour trying to invent.
Make Sharing Easy
People need to understand a post before they can decide who else might want it. Give them a clear central idea.
Detailed educational content can still be worth sharing. A checklist or tutorial may take time to work through, but its purpose should be obvious at the beginning. Readers can then decide whether it fits their own situation or someone else’s.
For a graphic, make the main point easy to find and leave enough room for the text to be readable. For a video, establish the premise early. With a long caption, use paragraphs that help readers follow the explanation.
Try showing the post to someone who has not helped create it. Ask what they think it is about. Their answer may reveal a confusing opening you no longer notice.
Create Content That Starts Conversations
Sometimes a person shares a post because they want a friend’s opinion. You can make room for that kind of exchange by asking a question with more than one reasonable answer.
“Has smartphone photography made people better photographers, or has it simply made everyone take more photographs?”
A professional photographer and someone who takes holiday pictures on a phone might have quite different responses. Both have a way into the conversation.
Find questions that already interest your audience. Photographers might discuss prime lenses versus zoom lenses. Designers may disagree about minimalist branding. Travelers could debate whether a carefully planned vacation is better than arriving with very little arranged.
Give the question some context, then let people answer in their own words. A prompt such as “COMMENT YES IF YOU AGREE!” offers very little to discuss.
You do not have to settle every debate. A thoughtful exchange can make the post worth passing along.
Make People Look Good for Sharing It
People’s shared posts can say something about their interests and personality. A useful photography tip gives someone a way to help a friend who is learning. An unusual historical photograph lets them share a discovery. A joke might suit the running conversation in their group chat.
Most people will not think through all of that before pressing the share button. Still, it helps to consider where your post would fit in their lives.
Could it help them explain something they care about? Would it amuse their colleagues? Does it express a frustration they have struggled to describe?
Educational posts, beautiful images, and stories about causes can all serve different purposes for the person sharing them. Think about that person’s reason for posting the content as well as your own reason for creating it.
Avoid Making Every Post About Your Business
Imagine talking to someone who manages to mention their business in every conversation. After a while, you know where each story is heading.
An account can develop the same habit. Product announcements, awards, special offers, another product announcement: even interested followers may run out of reasons to pay attention.
Give people something else to come back for. Answer a common question. Explain a useful technique. Show something interesting from your work, or discuss a development your customers have been asking about.
There is room for stories and humor, too, where they fit the audience. You can still promote products and services. Regularly giving followers something useful makes those offers part of a broader relationship.
Study What People Already Share
Take advantage of your past social media posts to find inspiration. Look at which ones received unusually high numbers of shares and sends. In addition, look at saves and comments, though they represent different responses.
Look carefully at the actual content. Was the use of a checklist able to make a complex task more accessible? Did an image show something from an unfamiliar viewpoint; did a joke capture an annoyance that your followers recognized right off the bat? Consider what inspired someone to share your post. The topic alone may not explain why your followers enjoyed it.
Even studying social media accounts outside of your field of expertise can provide insight. Both a gardening post and a marketing post could capture an audience’s attention through challenging some common guidance. While the topics themselves were clearly very different, how each approached the challenge is something you can learn from and apply to your own body of work.
Copying a post that was successful provides little opportunity for developing additional content around it. Understanding why your audience responded to the original content offers far greater opportunities.
Do Not Chase Virality at the Expense of Relevance
It can be tempting to use a viral meme just to fill out the rest of your calendar. Prior to posting, however, consider whether your followers will understand the relevance of the meme to your business. Some trends lend themselves easily to inclusion in a specific type of content. Other trends require such a lengthy explanation that the humor (if there ever really was any) has evaporated by the time you actually present it. If the only motivation for presenting a trend is because everyone else is doing it, then don’t feel obligated to follow suit. You do not need millions of shares for a single post to be worth your investment as a business. 100 shares from people who have demonstrated an interest in your area of specialty can create more meaningful conversations than 100,000 views from people who have no interest in your business.
Consider this target audience when determining what is worthy of your time.
Think Beyond Individual Posts
Developing a completely unique idea every day is exhausting. Using a regular format allows you to have more control over the development process of future posts.
For example, a photography company could establish a “Weekly Post” format where they identify a photo and post “What went wrong with this photo?” Each post would have a similar purpose – identifying problems with photos – but each week would feature a new photo.
Similarly, a marketing company could evaluate advertisements and describe an interesting decision-making aspect of creating that advertisement. A travel company could start evaluating destinations through a consistent “Is it worth visiting?” format. Each installment would include familiar elements – the title/subject would be known prior to viewing – and allow for creativity regarding the featured example.
You can adjust the format as you learn what readers find useful. A question that keeps coming up in the comments might deserve more space in the next instalment.
Over time, as you continue to add installments to the same theme, the series could potentially become synonymous with your account. When asked, “what is this week’s example?”, most likely it will be easier to determine than asking, “what should we write about today?”
Create Something You Would Share Yourself
Read your upcoming post as if you saw it in your own feed. Set aside all the effort you put into writing the post. Would the introduction draw you in? Is the image providing any value? Could you imagine sending this post to a friend and saying something about it? If you cannot answer yes to those questions, try to locate the problem. Are you talking too broadly? Is the information you are conveying already well-known within your audience? Or perhaps you buried the good stuff halfway through your caption. Occasionally changing images can help clarify what you are trying to communicate.
A content calendar helps you organize your posts. An empty slot, however, is a poor reason to publish something you would personally ignore.
When creating social media content, you are joining countless conversations between friends, coworkers, and people who share interests. Offer them something that they can add to their conversations: a solution, an observation they recognize, or an image that others want to view.
This is a useful benchmark to return to anytime you are considering creating another piece of content.