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BUY. PROMOTE. IMPRESS. SELL. REPEAT. WHY CHANGE WHAT WORKS. PRINT WORKS. TODAY MAGAZINE BY REV PUBLISHING CALL OR BOOK AN APPOINTMENT FOR MORE DETAILS AT 905.356.7283 [email protected] | REVPUBLISHING.COM | TODAY-MAGAZINE.COM | THE KEY TO SHAREABLE CONTENT: EMPATHY, ENGAGEMENT & EASE. What makes some things go viral and some things fade into the Internet ether, never to be seen again? What is it that drives people to click that elusive share button? Why has pretty much everyone seen the video of the woman who is now known as “Chewbacca Mom”, but no one is sharing a video you made that you thought was equally hilarious? It’s all about harvesting a genuine reaction out of people. If somebody views a video and has an actual belly laugh about it, tears streaming from their eyes, chances are, the video is getting shared. If someone looks a picture, and it makes them think, “wow, I wish I was in that place”, they’ll probably like and share it. It’s all about creating content that generates genuine emotion, be is happiness, sadness, sympathy, or anger. So how does this apply to your business, and what can you do to ensure that your social media content is as shareable as possible? We’ve outlined some great ways to start. MAKE IT RELATABLE All over the Internet, you’ll find scores and scores of click bait articles, ones you have to continuously click through to continue to access the content. These aren’t necessarily things people want to share. You need to find some thread of human connection, and let your audience connect with the content on a deeper level. Whether it’s a story of human survival or something people can laugh along with, it needs to be relatable. BE POSITIVE The biggest complaint people have about the news is that it is always negative. People are tired of negative, so enlighten their day with some positivity. The stories that get shared the most on the Internet are the happy ones. Whether it sparks creativity, is entertaining, or makes people feel better, those are the kind of things people want to share. READ ALL ABOUT IT The headline is the first thing a person sees, and it’s the thing that will either make them continue reading, or decide to scroll on past. Just make sure, when you come up with a great headline that you have great content to go with it, or the reader will start to lose trust in you. It shouldn’t be about just getting clicks, your content needs to be useful and people need to feel happy that they clicked on it. PRACTICALITY Touching on our last sentence…give the reader something of value. It needs to benefit them in some way (and they’ll share it if they think it will benefit their friends in some way). Nobody is going to share anything that ended up being a waste of his or her time. Don’t fall into the trap of putting up shoddy content just to get people to click on your content…this is a shortterm solution that will only end up costing you customers. Create value for people. They will appreciate that. Give them advice that is actually useful. Give actual instructions for things, and don’t leave room for misinterpretation. MAKE IT EASY People don’t want to read something only to look up every other word. And they don’t want to read something that requires them to click 10 times to get to the end of the article. The best ways to improve readability of your online posts are to incorporate bullet points, keep paragraphs short, don’t be overly verbose, pepper your content with several images, screenshots, gifs, charts, infographics, leave space between paragraphs and divide content with subheadings. TODAYMAGAZINE.CA 1