GROWTH SPRINT Training Week 3: 🤝Shareable Content🤝

How to use Shareable Content as a tactic for Instagram Growth

The GROWTH SPRINT is open to all members of TOO MUCH INSTAGRAM. If you’d like to know more, please read this piece that will explain it all:

How To Grow Your Instagram Account

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In brief, the GROWTH SPRINT is organised into three phases:

Phase One: Concept and Planning - Thurs 13th Feb - Thurs 6th March

Phase Two: Execution - Mon 10th March - Fri 4th April

Phase Three: Reflection - Thurs 24th April

You can find all GROWTH SPRINT posts published so far by clicking this button:

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Why is shareable content an important part of growth content?

Real talk: getting people to share your content is HARD but when growth is a priority it’s a powerful behaviour that can generate significant account growth.

That’s because Instagram recently revealed that one of the primary metrics for how many unconnected accounts your posts are shown to is sends (or shares as they used to be known). People might send your post to a friend in the DMs, or they might repost it to their Stories. The algorithm doesn’t distinguish between the two, but more shares = reaching more accounts that don’t already follow you.

And that is for TWO reasons:

1. when someone sends your post to their Stories or to a friend, you get ‘access’ to that audience

2. PLUS, every send is a signal to the algorithm to show your post to more unconnected accounts and at least some of those accounts will come and check you out to see if you’re worth a follow!

SO, creating shareable content is important if you want your account to grow BUT how do you do it?

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What does shareable content look like?

Whenever I come across advice on the internet about what shareable content looks like, it often sounds a lot like this list:

• relatable messages that mirror behaviour your audience recognises as their own.

• how tos/ tutorials: may be more relevant to non-fiction writers where your subject matter is more practical in nature e.g a business-related book, travel, finance

• tips/ advice/ recommendations: book recommendations; how you overcame a problem; your favourite ___ for ___

• quick wins i.e xx easy things you can do to achieve ___

• answering an FAQ - could be about a character, or a moment in history, or a little known fact about a particular place… the nature of the FAQ will vary depending on your genre and subject matter.

First of all, there is nothing wrong with these kinds of posts BUT if you’ve faithfully been creating this sort of content, and found that no one is sharing it, the problem could be that although your audience is finding your content useful, interesting or educational, there is no reason why they’d like to share it with anyone else.

What is missing is the motivation to share.

The post has to be more than useful or interesting - it has to create the desire for the person viewing it to send it to someone else.

This is why it’s impossible, for example, to specify whether a carousel or a Reel is ‘more shareable’; or which Reel format is more shareable - b-roll, talk-to-camera, or video+voiceover? All of these formats can become shareable if you understand how to motivate your audience to share your posts.

The purpose of this week’s training post is to dig into that motivation for your audience. You’re going to try to answer the question: what will motivate my audience to share my post(s)? What’s in it for them?

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Breaking down the anatomy of a shareable post

For a post to be shareable it has to make the sharer look good in some way.

It might:

• make the sharer look clever or interesting e.g unusual facts about, or insights into, a niche interest

• make the sharer look ‘cool’ in some way e.g something unusual, a fresh take on a tired subject, something really beautiful

• allow the sharer to help their audience e.g solutions for a problem they know they have in common with their audience

• say something that the sharer wishes they could say for themselves e.g a post about something they want other people to know

• allow the sharer to connect with the person/ people they’re sending the post to because it makes them think oh my god this is US! or omg this is ME!

• let the sharer demonstrate how well they know the person they’re sending the post to because this made me think of you, or I found this funny so I know you will too

• be something the sharer already knows but they want/ think everyone else to know

• be something the sharer just learned that they think everyone else should know

This work is nuanced and relies on you having a really good understanding of your audience as what is shareable will vary from audience to audience.

Here are ten example posts from different niches, that have over-performed in terms of sends when compared to the number of followers those accounts have.