Find Out Why Content Goes Viral. The Answer Will Surprise You.
Happiness has been identified as the key motivation when it comes to social sharing of content.
Joy, Delight, Surprise and Hope might sound like the names of Byron Bay preschoolers, but these happiness-related emotions are some of the main reasons that content goes viral.
Professor of Marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School Jonah Berger and his team of researchers studied nearly 7,000 articles in the New York Times looking for clues as to why some of the newspaper’s online articles were forwarded to friends and shared, and others were not.
They discovered that the more positive the content, the more likely it was to be shared. Read the full findings in their report What Makes Online Content Viral?
Sites like Upworthy and Buzzfeed count on tapping in to these emotions when creating headlines for their sites. But it’s not all warm and fuzzy. Animal cruelty, the stupidity of politicians, social injustice, medical scaremongering – these issues generate fear, anger and sadness and many of these agendas are pushing people’s Share buttons too.
Check out some examples of social sharing in action. These videos and their parodies have all gone wild in the past few weeks.
Sharing is caring
According to The Psychology of Sharing, a study conducted by the New York Times Customer Insight Group, we are motivated to share in order to:
- Bring valuable and entertaining content to others
- Define ourselves to others
- Nourish and grow our relationships
- Encourage self-fulfilment
- Get the word out about causes or brands
Crafting tailored content to engage your customers in dynamic, share-worthy ways is just the beginning. Businesses need to develop content strategies that take into consideration customer personas, as well as the psychology of social sharing.
Find out more about getting the most out of your newest sales people – your customers.