The Triggers That Make People Want To Share Your Content

I remember sharing content on social media that caught my attention and that share actually prompted my friends to re-share it again on their feeds and their friends actually re-shared the content again until the number of shares went up like crazy. When you look at it that way, you might think like “Jesus Christ, that content looks so easy.”  However, unbeknownst to us, the process of making that kind of content is not as easy as it looks like. Having been working in the content marketing world for years taught me one thing; brainstorming ideas every day is a must. If you are a business owner or someone who works in the business world, you may realise the fact that catching people’s attention is your inevitable sad fate. Why? That’s because catching their attention may prompt them to make purchase decision and this can determine your business success as well. Perhaps, the best real life example I can give you is how Starbucks deliberately caught people’s attention that prompted them to share Starbucks related content on social media. How do they do it? They do it by ‘messing’ with customers’ names on the cup on purpose. For example, if your name was Amy and the barista asked you to spell A-M-Y so they could make sure they wrote it right, you might think they wrote it right until you saw “Aimee” on your cup. You couldn’t help but laugh a little for the seemingly innocent slip-up. Then, after getting your coffee, you felt the need to take a picture of your coffee cup with your ‘new name’ “Aimee” and post it on your social media account. It turns out; many people who have experienced the same thing do the same too. People who haven’t, however, started being curious and went straight to Starbucks to see for themselves. So, did they attract curiosity? Yes. Did they successfully get more ‘traffic’ from that? Yes. And most importantly, did they increase their sales? Yes, of course. Now, what can you learn from this? What I learned from this; before making people buy your products, make them curious and find out if your products are worth trying. Make them and make their friends curious so you will increase the number of possibilities. Now the question is; how do we do that? How do we trigger them to share our content? Keep reading this article to find out!

Information gaps to spark curiosity

Humans are born curious by nature, even for something they don’t like, if the content really sparks their curiosity, they will do anything to find out. So, what’s the tip? Don’t describe everything in the caption or the content itself. For example, you are trying to promote a new perfume with sandalwood, musk and bergamot as the main scent, but your customers and audience don’t know about it yet. So you made a promotional video and there is some description in it. In order for you to successfully make people watch your promotional video and maybe go see the perfume themselves, make sure you don’t give away too much information about your perfume in the caption or announcement. Let’s make an example for the caption:

“See what’s inside this gorgeous baby? Find out here.”

Or, if you want to be more specific by encouraging your audience to come to your offline store, you can say this instead:

“What’s inside this gorgeous baby? The limited scents of the world – now mixed into one classy perfume. Don’t believe? Smell it yourself here in our elegant store.”

As for the content, you can make a short promotional video denoting a character that is best describing the ‘personality’ of the perfume, but still; don’t ever describe it fully even if it’s in your promotional video. Let the audience guess and let them be curious. If you are lucky, they will share it to their friends, asking them if they have ever tried the perfume. Attracting curiosity doesn’t always mean having to create something big. As long as your content doesn’t give away too much information, your content will catch ‘big’ attention from your audience.

Create memorable content

I remember seeing an ad on social media. I forgot exactly on which social media platform it was, but from that moment I saw the content, I knew I just couldn’t ‘not’ share it. The content is a video of Greta Thunberg, a climate activist and her powerful speech at the United Nations that went viral across social media. The message she brought in her speech was so encouraging and emotional that successfully evoked emotions from millions of people in the world. Here’s the most powerful speech she stated back then:

“This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here, I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you. People are suffering, people are dying; entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of the mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you,”

Not only did I share the content, I also kept re-watching it every day. If the content about climate change can move us so much, imagine what you can do for your business. The points you can get from this:

1. The most important part of attracting your audience is attracting their curiosity
2. Their mind is the key, after that, go after their heart
3. Design your content for skim readers too
4. Create helpful content

If you understand the points I have mentioned above, you know you are on the right path. The kind of content that can trigger shares is actually the one that can spark curiosity. It’s not easy, I know, but if you think from both your perspective and your audience’s perspective, you will find ideas to attract more customers.