You’ve had the magic in your hands all along… and you didn’t even know it.
Earlier today, +David Amerland shared a post that he wrote for +Social Media Today The Social Media Engagement Formula. In it, he basically says that a post should do well (whether original or shared) as long as it adheres to five very specific requirements. We are paraphrasing these five requirements, so be sure to read his article for more in-depth reasoning.
Appeal: Interests your audience.
Social Proof: Basically, once it starts getting shared, more and more people will feel comfortable sharing it.
Connection: Resonates with your audience.
Feeling: Some emotional trigger. In other words, the audience can’t be indifferent to your content.
Values: A subtle code that the creator of the post is passing on. (This is probably subconscious.)
It was the last piece “values” that reminded us of a post we came across on+Harvard Business Review Which Messages Go Viral and Which Ones Don’t. Here is the important paragraph from that article:
“A recent study (http://gplus.ly/21k2UOp) demonstrated that we can successfully predict which messages will go viral and which will not. This study showed that the ideas that are destined to spread have a characteristic signature at their origin — that is, quite literally, within the brain of the sender. These messages specifically activate key regions in two circuits in the sender’s brain: the “reward” circuit, which registers the value of the message to the sender, and the “mentalizing” circuit, which activates when we see things from the point of view of the person who receives the message. From the moment we first formulate a message, these two factors play a key role in whether or not they will go viral. The more you value an idea that you want to spread, the more likely you are to be successful at spreading it. In addition, the more accurately you can predict how others will feel about the message, the more likely you are to be successful at spreading this idea. These findings are profound because they imply that we can predict which messages will go viral and which ones will not based on these two factors.”
If we combine both articles, the takeaway is that if your posts have valuable content or ideas, take into account what your audience wants, and if YOU BELIEVE in their value and are committed to spreading the message, they are much more likely to get engagement or even go viral.
