Keeping your social media platforms stocked with quality content and getting your audience to engage with the content are two totally different things. You want to create content that will spread far and wide online to reach potential customers and boost conversions. But what type of content is that?
Here are five types of social media content that are more likely to be shared.
1. Interactive Content
Everyone loves content they can interact with. Interactive media responds to the user by presenting things like moving images, texts, audio, video, games, and more. Content marketing is no longer just about written content and static articles and guides. Content that is easier to engage with will get more engagement.
Content is more about the experience you can give the user instead of just the information you can provide. Quizzes are perfect for this as people love to share the quiz results with their friends.
If you’re active on Instagram, you can also do live Q&A sessions or Instagram polls to interact with your followers.
2. Infographics
One of the most shareable types of content is infographics. They are easy to digest and visually appealing. It was true in 2017 and it is true now. SumoMe’s Noah Kagan recently conducted a study of over 100 million different articles. It indicates that, more than anything else, infographics are shared.
This is likely due to the visual appeal, as reading seems like work at first glance. Infographics use the fact that the brain likes visuals to trick it into reading. Content is received better when matched with visual elements and a clean, simple layout. The text is also easier to understand once it’s presented in short, scannable chunks.
3. Content with Images
Image-rich content is more widely shared than content with just text. For instance, on Twitter, tweets with images are shared thrice as often as tweets with just plain text. Tweets with images get nearly twice as many likes as well. While the numbers are not the same, Facebook sees similar reception to posts with images attached.
Additionally, results of several polls indicate that more than fifty percent of people like to share content with images attached. The brain loves images, and when you use them to season your content, it will get more engagement.
4. List Posts
Along with infographics, people love to share lists. List posts provide content in a numbered list. This might be something like “5 tips to brushing your dog’s teeth,” “top 10 ways to spruce up your kitchen,” or something similar.
Like infographics, these posts tend to be popular because they make it easy for readers to consume helpful information. The combination of small blocks of text and white space is visually appealing to most readers.
5. Posts Evoking Strong Emotions
If your social media content posts spark strong emotions, then they are likely to be shared more. Posts with higher emotional value get more shares than other posts. There are all kinds of emotions, so which emotions will get your posts the most shares? Happy emotions such as joy, laughter, and amusement get more shares than others.
One of the most shared types of posts is those that inspire awe. If you want valuable content, focus on the type of emotion it elicits. Positive feelings and emotions appeal to many people and get the most shares.
Bonus: Newsworthy Posts
Another type of content that is shared regularly is news articles. News articles win out when considered across several industries. When viewed across a six-month average, news content gets more shares than articles in the auto industry, finance industry, education, food, travel, health, and others.
You won’t be able to announce breaking news, which is left up to sources such as CNN and BBC. Niche sources can be another outlet, such as Search Engine Roundtable and Mac Rumors. This is last on the list because unless it is a press release or something from CNN, this content won’t do as well as the rest on the list.
The Bottom Line
Remember, the first thing you need to do is make sure that you are creating interesting content. Then consider the format that you share it in, whether an infographic, a list, or an interactive post. Make sure to consider how emotionally driven the post is. Once you have addressed these areas, you can create and share your content.
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