×

Don’t Hate!: Why Funny Social Media Content Gets Lots Of Shares

Funny posts are very common on social media. If you’re a frequent user of social media, you probably see more than one funny post a day – and chances are, you’ve shared one or two of those posts without much thought.

 

But what do you think urged you to take action over a funny post?

 

 

According to research, you were psychologically triggered. To give you some insight on psychological triggers, here are four important triggers mentioned by the online marketing institute:

 

“Social Approval: People love to express their attitudes and receive affirmative feedback from their circle of friends and acquaintances. Sharing content is a way to express one’s personality to a group.

Communication: Humans are social beings. We all want to nurture relationships with other people, and digital content enables us to do this more easily and frequently.

Support Ideas: Social media is often used to signal support for ideas, political views and personal beliefs; in this is way, users connect with a greater, altruistic good.

Entertainment: At the end of the day, plenty of people use social media to wind down. Entertaining content includes humor, memes, videos, music, and more.”

 

Notice how humour content is one of the important triggers? In general, these four psychological triggers lean towards the positive spectrum of emotions rather than the negative ones — and there is a reason for that.

 

Positive Posts VS Negative Posts

Posts that are emotionally moving, light-hearted, funny, and awe-inspiring are considered positive posts; in contrast, posts that incite anger and sadness are considered negative posts. While negative posts also get a good number of shares on social media due to the emotional attachment, scientific studies on human psychology show that positive posts seem to outmatch negative posts when it comes to shareability.

 

According to an article in The New York Times, quoting professor Jonah Berger, “Readers also tended to share articles that were exciting or funny, or that inspired negative emotions like anger or anxiety, but not articles that left them merely sad. They needed to be aroused one way or the other, and they preferred good news to bad. The more positive an article, the more likely it was to be shared”

 

What This Means For Marketers

But what do all these data mean for digital marketers? How can you promote your brand WHILE being funny (or positive)?

 

Stop focusing on promotion, and focus more on conversations.

 

When you focus on forming conversations with your customers, it becomes easier to craft posts that are naturally positive which you can use to market your brand, especially if you’re an expert in your field of business. This, in turn, makes your brand “shareable” and helps get your brand name out into the market.

 

Don’t be afraid to use memes, informative videos, and inspiring quotes that are in line with your brand’s principles when you deal with social media. These posts have been tried and tested to work, and all you need is just a little burst of creativity to be able to produce content that is shareable.

 

Social media is a platform infinitely different from the traditional media like TV and newspapers. And it follows a different set of rules as well: if for traditional media “bad news sells,” in social media “good news gets more shares.”

 

We know how hard it is to start and sustain a brand’s online presence in social media, that’s why we advise people to make use of the available social media management tools or hire a team of experts from a local SEO agency help manage and strategize their social media pages.

Propel Your Business Growth

Get a complimentary website audit + expert-tailored digital marketing strategies