There are many articles, videos, and books which contain the secret to creating the perfect online presence through posts.
There seems to be a new recognition of the importance of creating good content on social media. Most importantly on how to make a post shareable on Facebook. This is because sharing on social media equals free advertising.
Having users share your company's content on their Facebook feed helps your business more than any online advertisement.
Creating a post on social media, which used to be throwing ideas out into the online world, is now a carefully thought-out science.
Posts need to grab the reader’s attention straight from the get-go, be interesting enough for users to read the entire post, yet informational or surprising enough that users are compelled to share it. So what are the best-kept secrets to creating the perfect shareable post?
To make things easier, we broke it up into 5 steps:
1. Use Video
How to make a Facebook post shareable? Users love to watch videos, so consider adding videos to your stream of content. Videos have a higher engagement rate than word posts or images alone, thus giving them a higher sharing rate.
This is because videos are more entertaining than a word or image posts alone, even though each method may be relaying the same information. Here are some ways to create a better video:
- Make sure videos are understandable with and without audio. Not all videos auto-play with the sound on and users will scroll past what they can't understand.
- Keep videos simple, short, and sweet! Videos that are 30 seconds or shorter have a higher chance of being viewed from start to finish.
- Consider changing the dimensions of your video to square. Square videos outperform landscape videos in views, engagement, and reach. One of the main factors is how over 92% of Facebook users view Facebook on their mobile devices. Watching a video with square dimensions on mobile shows more of the video than landscape dimensions, providing users with a better experience.
- To motivate users to share, they first need to be intrigued and motivated to view your content. End each video with a call-to-action to like, comment on, and share your video.
- Consider video strategy consulting with professionals.
So here's one of those exceptions to that short "rule."
There are opportunities to provide great value to your target audience by increasing the length as needed.
This is a video we produced for one of our subscribed brands - Julie Stoian. Crips visuals and fancy text help to get you curious about what she's talking about.
2. Inspire Emotion
Inspire emotion through your posts. This is one effective technique on how to make posts shareable on Facebook.
Emotions are a crucial aspect of our lives, so take advantage of this! This is where you can also consider creating user-generated contents.
Content with an emotionally touching story is much more likely to be shared. Have you ever scrolled through social media and found an article that was amazing, uplifting, sad, or surprising?
Chances are, if you enjoyed the piece, you compulsively wanted to share it with your friends and family. In regards to emotion, over 10,000 of the top most shareable articles were analyzed for the emotions invoked. Interestingly enough, the top 3 invoked emotions were awe, laughter, and amusement.
These positive emotions play a part in creating the most shareable posts.
While the emotion of the articles you share is important, it is also good to consider the emotions in the day-to-day posts.
Has your company decided to show humor and personality or keep to a strict ‘corporate’ tone in each post?
Consider your target audience and determine the tone that would work best in connecting with them.
Fast food companies such as Wendy’s and McDonalds choose to have a sarcastic and humorous voice on social media.
While this works for their demographic of teenagers and young adults, adopting the same tone and persona would not work for a company such as the Wall Street Journal.
3. Use a Quiz (Ask Questions)
Provide your followers with a fun quiz. Quizzes on Facebook are a great tool to utilize since they are the most engaging type of content on Facebook.
Users love to take them, and companies can quickly reach and engage with many users in a short amount of time. But more than the connection is the shareability of quizzes; users love to share their results, talk about how the results are applicable, and challenge their friends.
Take, for instance, a quiz that determines what form of potato you are. While it may sound random, this quiz headline is something that grabs attention and stops users from scrolling down their Homepage.
And who knows? After taking the quiz, you may be proud to share your random result of ‘French Fry’.
Not all quizzes have to be random or weird. Instead, quizzes can easily be adapted to fit your business and goals. If you happen to be a gardening company, offer a personality quiz that provides users with different landscaping services you offer based on the result of their quiz.
Or say you own a clothing shop. Post a quiz for users to find out what their new style should be, with the results based on the clothing you provide.
However, you create the quiz, remember to be creative, and end with a call-to-action for users to share their results and challenge others. This is another reliable tip on how to make Facebook posts shareable.
4. Focus on the Headline
Headlines are more important than you may realize as they quickly grab the user’s attention.
With their bolded or large font, the headline is the first thing a user reads before judging whether or not to read the entire post.
To improve your headlines, keep ‘short and simple’ as your goal.
Break away from headlines that offer a simple summary, instead, write a hook and enticing glimpse into the article.
But be careful not to post cliches or catfish headlines, such as “You won’t believe what you’re about to read!”
A carefully written headline captures attention and motivates users to read. Articles and posts that users find fun, interesting, or surprising, are often shared with their followers.
5. Think about the Length
The optimal number of words for an article on Facebook is 2,000-2,500.
Users are most likely to be checking Facebook through their mobile devices.
Pair this with short attention spans, and you can see why content that is short and to-the-point is important.In heavy-text posts, even posts that are 2,000 words, break them up into lists.
Users won’t spend the time reading a large chunk of text and deciphering which information is worth reading for.
Instead, they skip the post entirely and continue scrolling.
In order to attract users, lay out information in a clean, simple list, either in the beginning or middle of your post.
Users often scan quickly to gain the information they need, so offer up highlights of your posts or step-by-steps to accomplish a task. Chances are, if users find your list helpful, they are more apt to take the time to read the entire post and share with friends who would be interested in the same information.
There are many different ways on how do you make a post shareable on Facebook.
By adding new content such as videos or quizzes, changing your posts to invoke emotion, making your headlines stand out, or breaking it up into a list, users are more likely to share your content with their followers.
Above all, don’t assume users will share the content they enjoy.
Be sure to ask for engagement with your content by liking, commenting, and sharing.
Users may be interested in the content you provide, but might not think about sharing it until prompted to.
Do you struggle with creating the right content for your viewers? Talk to us at Content Supply! We can create a plan to produce custom content each month for your brand. Telling your story, creating a community, and increasing your sales is our goal.
