The rise and pop­u­lar­i­ty of social media has encour­aged hot dis­cus­sions and debates to what actu­al­ly moti­vates humans to share. That’s why we at Linkdex decid­ed to ded­i­cate a blog to the psy­cho­log­i­cal aspects of social shar­ing. Why do we share? Who shares what and what tools are used to do so?

We know that Face­book cur­rent­ly has 800 mil­lion active users whilst 230 mil­lion tweets are sent each day. But what’s the moti­va­tion behind all this shar­ing?

What Motivates us to Share?

• Inter­est­ing or Insight­ful Mate­r­i­al – Peo­ple share mate­r­i­al because they have found it use­ful or think oth­ers might find it inter­est­ing. The moti­va­tion is to bring rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion to those we care about the most. On the oth­er hand peo­ple might share con­tent which is rel­e­vant for them but not nec­es­sar­i­ly the recip­i­ent. This might be done to show off their knowl­edge or define them­selves.
• Advoca­tive Shar­ing – We share to get the word out about caus­es (or brands) we believe in. Shar­ing is dri­ven by our desire to main­tain and shape rela­tion­ships with oth­ers. There­fore if we are pas­sion­ate about a cause we would want oth­ers to build a rela­tion­ship with it as well.
• Social Val­i­da­tion – Peo­ple share to define them­selves to show what they care about and give peo­ple a sense of who they are and why they care. For exam­ple, some social net­work­ers reg­u­lar­ly post updates of their day to day lives. They do this for a sense of impor­tance and because it makes them feel con­nect­ed and more involved with the world.
• To Pass on Some­thing Enter­tain­ing – We share to bring enter­tain­ing con­tent to oth­ers. Humour is one of the main rea­sons why we are shar­ing con­tent online. Just think of the mem­o­rable Old Spice cam­paign, which was one of the most talked about and shared viral cam­paigns ever.
• Duty or Incen­tive – Using an incen­tive is a great way to moti­vate some­one to react to your con­tent. This could be in the form of a dis­count or sale. A good exam­ple of this is Love­Film who have sent free tri­als to their cur­rent cus­tomers pro­vid­ed they sign up a friend. They are shar­ing the dis­count and the ser­vice in exchange for a reward. This is an offline strat­e­gy but it works the same online.

Note how easy it is to share a youtube link which led to the suc­cess of Old Spice viral cam­paign.

So far we have list­ed and explained the 5 pri­ma­ry moti­va­tions for online shar­ing. Now I would like to take a look at dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of shar­ers and what actu­al­ly dri­ves them to share con­tent online.

The Different Types of Sharers

Last August The New York Times and Cus­tomer Insight Group teamed up with Lat­i­tude Research to con­duct a study to bet­ter under­stand the moti­va­tions behind online shar­ing and answer the above ques­tions. The research seg­ment­ed the types of shar­ers into 6 per­sonas but I believe it’s fair to say you’ll find one dom­i­nant streak per per­son. Below are my thoughts, sep­a­rat­ed by the head­ers as denot­ed by the New York Times study.

• Altru­ists: This refers to char­i­ta­ble shar­ing mean­ing that this type is dri­ven by the desire to help oth­ers by send­ing an arti­cle to some­one else for their ben­e­fit. Anoth­er exam­ple would be devot­ing time to review a prod­uct because they have enjoyed it and they want to share their pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence. They are moti­vat­ed by empa­thy and con­nect­ed­ness. The pre­ferred tools for shar­ing in this case are email and Face­book.
• Careerists: These can be cat­e­go­rized as well-edu­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­als with estab­lished net­works of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al con­tacts. They aim to bring rel­e­vant con­tent and peo­ple togeth­er to stim­u­late dis­cus­sions in order to get things done. They aim to build a rep­u­ta­tion for them­selves by being ded­i­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­als. Usu­al­ly con­tent is shared via email and Face­book.
• Hip­sters: Defined as main­ly male and the youngest type of shar­ing per­sona, they are usu­al­ly very famil­iar with the dig­i­tal sphere and shar­ing con­tent online is part of their social rou­tine. They like to be per­ceived as being the first and get cred­it for it. Their aim is to start and encour­age con­ver­sa­tions and dis­cus­sions as they feel the need to con­nect to the world. They are usu­al­ly dri­ven by the desire to show the world who they are and cre­ate new friend­ships. Their pre­ferred tools are Twit­ter, Face­book and to some extent email.
• Boomerangs: As the name sug­gests it’s all about what comes back to them after they have social­ly engaged with oth­ers, they sim­ply want to get reac­tions. This per­sona tends to be active­ly engaged in online activ­i­ties such as antic­i­pat­ing in debates and com­ment­ing. Boomerangs need to feel con­nect­ed there­fore they use many dif­fer­ent social plat­forms like Twit­ter, Face­book, email and blogs.
• Con­nec­tors: Are main­ly female who share to stay in touch with their friends. They most­ly enjoy enter­tain­ing con­tent and sim­ply get joy out of shar­ing it with their friends. They espe­cial­ly like con­tent which might lead to off-line expe­ri­ences such as vouch­ers for a free cof­fee etc. Con­nec­tors main­ly use Face­book and email for con­tent dis­tri­b­u­tion.
• Selec­tives: As the name already sug­gests this cat­e­go­ry shares valu­able con­tent but only with select­ed peo­ple. In return they also expect to get a reac­tion for their effort of shar­ing rel­e­vant con­tent. Selec­tives tend to be old­er with a more tra­di­tion­al approach to social as a result email is their pre­ferred method of shar­ing.

Why is it important to Understand Social Networking?

Under­stand­ing how and why peo­ple share allows us to tar­get our con­tent and pro­mote shar­ing bet­ter. If you are a char­i­ty you can tar­get the altru­ists who are shar­ing your con­tent because they want to advo­cate your organ­i­sa­tion. Or if you are an indie record label you might want to tar­get the Hip­sters on Twit­ter who all want to be the first per­son to notice and share your con­tent. In this case, the record label might want to pro­vide exclu­sive music tracks for free on Twit­ter.

Peo­ple have to trust you enough in order to share your con­tent with the peo­ple they care about and their peers. Brands have to ensure that the infor­ma­tion and con­tent they pro­vide is trust­wor­thy. The New York Times study high­light­ed the fact that more and more peo­ple (49%) are trust­ing peer rec­om­men­da­tions over what a brand is say­ing. Shar­ing allows them to inform oth­ers of prod­ucts they care about with the poten­tial to change opin­ions and encour­age actions. This clear­ly shows that brands have lost cred­i­bil­i­ty and their appeal of trust­wor­thi­ness. The good news though is that social media enables brands to pro­vide qual­i­ty con­tent and to have a trans­par­ent dia­logue with cus­tomers and fur­ther encour­age com­mu­ni­ca­tion and shar­ing amongst them.

The rise of social has cre­at­ed a two-way dia­logue with cus­tomers rather than a one-way con­ver­sa­tion there­fore it is cru­cial for brands to be trans­par­ent and have a human voice. Brands have to ensure that they cre­ate sharable con­tent. For exam­ple videos are more like­ly to become viral and use­ful blog-post should fea­ture wid­gets so that it’s easy to share.

How­ev­er, this con­tent should be cre­at­ed with the under­stand­ing that the rela­tion­ships that peo­ple val­ue most are with one anoth­er and not with brands. Fol­low­ing on from this, con­sumers must find con­tent trust­wor­thy before they will share it.

In order for your con­tent to be shared you have to choose net­works that make sense to your audi­ence. Make sure you know what their net­work­ing chan­nel pref­er­ences are and which of them they are using. If your audi­ence can be cat­e­gorised as Careerists Linkedin will be the most suit­able net­work; in regards to Hip­sters Twit­ter will be the most suit­able.

One way to get there is for a brand to encour­age hon­est and open pub­lic dia­logue with­out fil­ter­ing out the neg­a­tive com­ments. A good exam­ple is Nes­tle, when in 2010 a Green­peace cam­paign was protest­ing against Nestle’s “unsus­tain­able palm oil pol­i­cy” accus­ing the brand for cut­ting down the rain for­est. As a result its Face­book fol­low­ers start­ed to post angry com­ments on Nestle’s fan page. The reac­tion of Nes­tle was to delete fans and post defen­sive com­ments in return. By act­ing this way they turned their 90,000 plus fan base into angry pro­test­ers rather than online advo­cates.

What Brands have to Do to Encourage Social Sharing

• Appeal to Their Sense of Humour: Humor­ous con­tent is most like­ly to be shared and there­fore become viral. Peo­ple have always liked shar­ing enter­tain­ing and fun­ny con­tent. Inform­ing con­sumers through enter­tain­ing con­tent has proven to be an effec­tive way to reach them and catch their atten­tion. Fun­ny con­tent makes peo­ple laugh, it’s infec­tious and makes them want to share it with oth­ers (also because it’s like­ly that they get cred­it for shar­ing ‘this fun­ny viral’). So think humor­ous con­tent.

• Cre­ate Con­tent which is Rein­forc­ing Your Cus­tomer’s Self-Image: It’s cru­cial to know your tar­get demo­graph­ic. Ask your­self ques­tions like: What is my audi­ence already shar­ing? What type of con­tent? This will help you to fig­ure out what type of con­tent they are already shar­ing and ‘what’ they are like­ly to share with oth­ers. A very good exam­ple is Nike’s “Make Your­self” cam­paign. The aim of the cam­paign was to encour­age women to improve their phys­i­cal per­for­mance and to share their strat­e­gy of becom­ing their own ‘best ver­sion’ of them­selves with each oth­er. The Nike Women Face­book page fea­tured a sec­tion named ‘I am mak­ing myself’ and all antic­i­pat­ing women could leave com­ments with state­ments in order to inspire oth­er women to fol­low their exam­ple. The state­ments start­ed with ‘I am mak­ing myself’ and users then fin­ished it with adjec­tives such as fit, strong, healthy, etc; giv­ing a short descrip­tion of what helped them to achieve their cho­sen phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics. This is a great cam­paign exam­ple of con­tent peo­ple want to share even if they are not Nike enthu­si­asts.

• Pro­duce Inter­est­ing and Inno­v­a­tive Arti­cles: Accord­ing to a study con­duct­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia in part­ner­ship with the New York Times peo­ple like to share intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­leng­ing arti­cles. The study showed that peo­ple are more like­ly to share con­tent aim­ing to inspire awe. Addi­tion­al­ly, it’s inter­est­ing to note that longer arti­cles fea­tur­ing in-depth analy­sis and dis­cus­sion are more like­ly to be shared than short­er ones. This is due to the more engag­ing nature of a longer arti­cle. What­ev­er mar­ket you are oper­at­ing in make sure that you pub­lish inter­est­ing and insight­ful con­tent.

• Pro­vide Dis­counts and Incen­tives: A good real-life exam­ple for shar­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing con­tent amongst peers is Groupon. They man­aged to work out that peo­ple val­ue coupons and that they are like­ly to share these with their friends and peers with­out the actu­al mer­chant hav­ing to adver­tise the dis­count. There­fore their entire busi­ness is based on offer­ing group dis­counts on a dai­ly basis. It’s time that brands recog­nise the val­ue of incen­tives in terms of shar­ing. Peo­ple are far more like­ly to share con­tent which is  ben­e­fi­cial to them and their peers.

• Sup­port­ing a Good Cause and Advoca­tive Shar­ing: Imag­ine you are a brand and you just have added a new addi­tion or fea­ture to one of your prod­ucts or even extend­ed one of your ser­vices. Sure­ly, you want your cus­tomers to know about that. Con­sid­er inform­ing loy­al cus­tomers about the lat­est addi­tions and fea­tures as they are like­ly to antic­i­pate in advoca­tive shar­ing. A dif­fer­ent exam­ple for this would be the ‘Walk the Walk – Unit­ing Against Breast Can­cer’ which orig­i­nal­ly start­ed as a one-off fundrais­ing event but has since grown into a mul­ti-mil­lion pound char­i­ty rais­ing aware­ness for breast can­cer. The rea­son for the char­i­ty to have blos­somed to that extent sim­ply is because women who par­tic­i­pat­ed shared their expe­ri­ences and encour­aged oth­ers to take action as well.

Using Analysis to Inform Strategy

Keep in mind that once a brand is able to suc­cess­ful­ly get their con­tent shared, it doesn’t stop there. Brands should lis­ten to what is being said (or not being said) about the con­tent shared. Is it res­onat­ing? Are peo­ple com­ment­ing on what they are viewing/reading? Is the brand respond­ing? In order for your con­tent to be shared you have to choose net­works that make sense to your audi­ence. Make sure you know what their net­work­ing chan­nel pref­er­ences are and which of them they are using. If your audi­ence can be cat­e­gorised as Careerists Linkedin will be the most suit­able net­work; in regards to Hip­sters Twit­ter will be the most suit­able.

So be sure to iden­ti­fy why peo­ple are shar­ing con­tent about your brand, who they are and what it is you need to cre­ate for them to share. Encour­ag­ing online shar­ing of con­tent should be seen as a process that begins with the incep­tion of con­tent and con­tin­ues long after the con­tent is shared.