Masso Group

One of the hardest things about trying to get a campaign to go viral on Facebook is getting people to share. We all know that using engaging speech is needed if we want others to pass content along, but what does that actually mean? Adding pictures or video certainly entice, but how should you structure the words in your posts to give them the best possible chance of being shared? Self proclaimed “Social Media Scientist” Dan Zarella has taken a boffins eye view of what works (and what doesn’t) on different social networks, most recently focusing on data pulled from Facebook. Dan’s data-set comprised of links posted to Facebook from popular

mainstream news outlets, amassing over 12,000 links which can be mined for trends in popular phrases, words and sentence structure.

Topics like Twitter, Google and iPhone may be poular on Twitter, but  on the more mainstream Facebook are among among the least shareable words on Facebook. Overall the least popular words were:  “vs”, “apps” and “review”.
On the flip-side Facebook leads the way as the most shareable word on Facebook, with superlatives like “most”, “why” and “how” are among the most sharable words.
The data also reveals that the simpler the speech, the more likely it is your post will be shared, with posts deemed to be the most simple recording 30% higher share rates than average.

The study also points to the traditional journalistic technique of using nouns and verbs heavily, the inclusion of adjectives and adverbs in a Facebook post headline significantly reduce shareability.
Whilst the effect was small, the inclusion of numbers provided a small boost to Facebook sharing stats, with posts with digits recording 1.25% higher sharing rates than the average.
Perhaps the most unsurprising data to come out of Dan Zarella’s research so far has been the effect of linguistic content.  Posts involving sex nearly 90% more likely to be shared than the average. Positive content, learning and media also recorded elevated sharing rates.
As willing as Facebook users were to share happy posts, negative comments and talk of anxiety were a real downer, with users least willing to spread the misery. This could be a challenge for many charities and NGO’s who have traditionaly relied on pulling on heart strings may find it hard to generate viral content.

 

(Source: digital media)