What Makes Us Share on Social Media?

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As bloggers, we use social media for two reasons – one, for our personal lives and two, for our blogs.  We share on social media to get people to see our content, to send traffic to our posts and to build relationships.  Social media can be both great and terrible for all of these aims.  But the key to achieving these or other goals is to have a little psychology behind what we do and understand what makes us share on social media?

The draw of social media

We’ve all done it, with Facebook in particular.  You share a quick post on your blog’s page about your latest post then you stop off on your main feed and catch a few updates from your friends.  Then you see an ad or an update from a company you like and check out their latest product.  One thing leads to another and you realise you have been scrolling and reading for an hour!

There’s a reason for this – Facebook and the others tap into the brain’s pleasure centre.  According to a study detailed on Buffer’s post about the psychology of Facebook, there is a strong connection between the reward centre in the brain, called the nucleus accumbens and Facebook.

How?  Because we experience rewarding feelings towards things like money, sex, food – and social acceptance.  That means when people like our posts, we feel good about ourselves.  And when someone shares our content, we get that twinge of satisfaction.

The power of the ‘like’

Continuing with Facebook as an example, the website itself acknowledge the power of a ‘like’:

“Like” is a way to give positive feedback or to connect with things you care about on Facebook. You can like content that your friends post to give them feedback or like a Page that you want to connect with on Facebook – Facebook

In fact, a study in the US showed that 44% of Facebook users ‘like’ content that their friends have posted at least once a day and 29% do it multiple times a day.  So not only do we like to receive a like, but we also like to give them.

Why we share on social media

But why do we like some stuff, share other posts and completely ignore another one?  That’s where another level of psychology comes in.

According to Buffer’s podcast on the topic, there are seven reasons why people share something on social media:

• Emotion – it affects us on an emotional level being amusing, surprising or shocking (amusing is the most popular)
• Altruism – we think others will find this interesting, so we share it
• Self-presentation – around 80% of what we post is about ourselves
• Self-expression – we want the world to know what we think
• Staying connected – we want the people we care about to stay connected to us via the content we share
• Social currency – we want to be the first one to share something
• Support a cause – raise awareness of a cause or issue we feel strongly about

Another variation of this was based on research from CoSchedule and even comes with some handy figures to help illustrate the point:

• 49% of people shared something for entertainment, to inform others about something they care about, including products and services, to encourage action in others or even to change their opinions about something
• 68% of us share to define ourselves and give others a sense of who we are and what we believe in
• 78% of us share to build relationships, keep in touch with others
• 69% of us share to feel self-fulfilled and that we are more involved in the world
• 84% of us share because we want to support the cause

How to use psychology in your posts

So how can we use these ideas about what makes us share on social media to better choose what to post for our blogs?  Can using a little psychology help us reach more people and get more reactions to every update?

Value filled posts

Top of the list is making sure that we offer plenty of value in our updates.  This doesn’t mean discount vouchers or special offers – it means useful, funny or interesting information that readers will enjoy.

You can also consider the value of the posts that you are connecting your social media updates to – do they offer the most value for your reader?  Google loves long-form content, so we often consider it for SEO purposes but does the reader?  If your reader is getting good value from the post, they will often share it without hardly a prompt.

Prompt interaction

Focusing on that self-expression and self-presentation concepts, you can also post content that creates engagement and prompts interaction – top of the list for this are quizzes.  Think about how many times you randomly filled in a quiz because you saw it.  There was no gain, no prize or anything, you just had the chance to tell the world your opinion.  And more times than not, I bet you shared it afterwards too!

Ask a question

Similarly, asking questions and getting people to give their opinions also work well.  Commenting on blogs was once a big thing but this has faded somewhat.  However, commenting on social media updates is still common and the more people comment on your posts, the great reach on sites like Facebook will be.  Reactions = greater reach, remember.

Conclusion

Getting your content seen on social media (especially Facebook) can be hard work.  Reach is declining and there’s a greater emphasis on paying to get people to see what you post.  But if you use a bit of psychology in your posts and use these ideas to help fuel what and how you post, then you have a better chance of getting that all-important engagement with the right people.

Guess what I’m going to say?  If you found this useful and interesting, please share on social media!!