Small business owners and marketers alike have been grappling with the question of what makes a Facebook post go viral for many years. While it seems that there is no formula that guarantees “shareability”, we can increase the likelihood of Facebook shares by getting a better understanding of what highly shared posts typically include. Here are 15 ways to make your Facebook posts more shareable:

Keep Perfect Timing

Tactics like “news-jacking” can be a tricky task because it requires both planning ahead according to specific dates, and being able to improvise quickly in response to spontaneous opportunities. But, if you get it right, the reward is worth the hassle. Stay on top of trending topics and breaking news stories. If there’s something relevant to your community or industry, jump in (responsibly) and join the conversation.

Express Your Provocative Opinions, Cleverly

Controversy is always good for ratings, but it can get even better if you approach it with a twist. Witty sarcasm will get you better results than a rant and a message from an individual is more effective than a public announcement. If you can share you opinion in a clever way, it’s a great way to increase engagement and improve the chances of your post being shared. For a look at some things you shouldn’t post on your Facebook page, read our recent article on Social Media fails.

Tell a Human Story

People are attracted to real-life stories that show a culmination of admirable values – friendship, loyalty, love, compassion, courage, and more. Try to tell a story of one individual that is universally touching, and relevant to your industry.

Introduce a New Perspective

Challenge your followers to think differently and suggest an out-of-the-ordinary point of view. You can formulate posts like this in the form of a question, and encourage your fans to post their thoughts on the subject.

Be Creative When Encouraging Engagement

Facebook users have enough experience with call to actions in the style of: “Like if you agree” or “Share to show you care.” Try a more creative approach. Instead, use phrases like “I don’t know about you, but…” or “Don’t you just love…” and you’ll see better results.

Use Powerful Quotes

Motivational sayings are successful because they are always relevant, and because they can be interpreted by your readers as a personal statement that bears an individual meaning to their own lives. When you combine that with a personality that is unanimously recognized as inspirational, you are on the right track.

Put Your Finger to Something

This type of post aspires to get an enthusiastic “that’s so true!” as a reaction. If you can identify a common nuisance, absurdity or paradox that people confront all the time but never really bother to think about, you will see a wave of consent in the form of Likes and Shares.

Don’t Tell the Punchline:

Tease your followers with an enticing title, promise them a thrilling punchline, but don’t give it away! This is a great tool not only for enhancing virality but also for increasing click-through rates.

Make Fun Lists

Organizing content in the form of a list is an especially engaging way to keep readers interested and curious. But you have to choose list topics that people can’t help but read. Hey, like this one!

Use Irresistible Visuals

It’s pretty straightforward. Facebook users scroll through an endless feed of updates from a large number of sources. If you want them to pause on your post and even share it with their friends you need to catch their eye immediately, and gorgeous or unique visuals are extremely effective for that purpose.

Write Headlines That Are 100% Human

The vast majority of content that is highly-shared, tends to be very ‘human’ by nature. Topics like food, home, and lifestyle accounts for an estimated 85% of the world’s most viral content. Topics like business, tech, and news actually accounted for only 14% of this traffic. That’s a pretty drastic difference!

Don’t Always Use The Same Headlines From Your Other Social Networks

Each social network has its own quirks and audience personality.

We often measure these quirks by demographic elements like age and gender, but you get a whole new picture when you see the words used in viral posts for each network. Realize that the type of user and interaction on a particular social media platform will differ from one to the next.

Pull at The Heart Strings

Emotions are a crucial aspect of our daily lives. As human beings, we need to feel a range of different emotions. On Facebook and a lot of other social media platforms, people love to engage and share content that is emotionally touching. What most people don’t realize is that as humans, we also love sharing emotionally touching content with people we care about. When we see something that touches us, we compulsively want to share that feeling with friends and family — whether it’s funny, sad, disturbing or even embarrassing!

Use Shorter, Simpler Titles

Title character length as well as structural complexity demonstrate a significant and sometimes negative relationship with social engagement.  The optimal length of a headline for social engagement is 25 to 55 characters. Articles within this range average about 20% more shares.

Specific Parts of Speech

Verbs in base form (e.g. “give”), adverbs (e.g. “always”), and pronouns (e.g. “she”) were found to have a positive correlation with social sharing.  Coordinating conjunctions (e.g. “and”) demonstrate a statistically significant negative correlation with shares.

As always, when it comes to your social media marketing, always post responsibly. I hope these tips will help you to get your post shared more often. We’ll see you online!