How to Empower Your Audience for Better Organic Sharing

With the rise of organic sharing and algorithms, here’s how you can identify and empower your content cheerleaders to grow and deepen engagement. 

With algorithms, more social media platforms are focusing on organic shares. What your friends and family share is more valued than other content.
There have been several changes from Facebook favoring this approach, and Instagram and Twitter have adopted algorithms as well.
Publishers and brands have to find new ways of engaging and growing their audience. We’ve noted before how some publishers are building communities around their individual content creators. 
But there’s another source you can activate as well. Your most loyal fans can become your cheerleaders on social. You can take steps to cultivate and care for these relationships in a multitude of beneficial ways.

First, Identify Your Superstars

Who are your biggest fans? Who are the ones on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, that are constantly engaging with your content? Start making a note of the individuals who champion what you post. 
Look to shares, comments, and reactions over likes. Sharing and commenting suggest a deeper level of engagement, and choosing a Facebook reaction takes more time to click than a simple like.
Not sure if you have any influencers or superfans? You can also discover potential fans by finding those who like similar content in your vertical. Check out this story by PopSugar. We took a look at its engagements via Spike’s new Story View.

The story had over 70,700 total interactions when we took a look. It was already over-performing for both tweets and Facebook engagements against PopSugar’s average performance. So, let’s take a look at who was sharing it out.

If we look down at the influencers, we can see who’s sharing the story across social media. There’s another PopSugar account, yes, but also a publishing house and two authors. If we start paging through the influencers panel, we can find more fans that have their own substantial reach on social.
Start noting who these fans are. These are the ones you want to engage.

Recognize Their Devotion

One of the great things about social media is that there is no more ‘man behind the curtain’, so to speak. Your audience expects transparency with your content. They want to not only consume, but participate in the conversation.
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This Facebook Live video, from Curiosity, had 2,300 comments, along with 707 likes/reactions and 41 shares. The video challenged viewers to a trivia game and community managers responded to fans in the comments.
Facebook Live is an amazing way to recognize your power followers. You can interact with them in real time by having social media editors be active in the comments, or even acknowledge them in the actual video broadcast.
Interactive content is another great way to give your followers a voice. Polls, memes, quizzes, and customizable content experiences all let them join in, and then you can respond to that participation.

View this post on Instagram

Allen Iverson has trouble picking the final player in his top 5 of all-time. Who would you add?

A post shared by Bleacher Report (@bleacherreport) on Aug 22, 2016 at 4:18pm PDT

Bleacher Report often galvanizes their followers by asking them to share their sports opinions in the comments. When we looked at Instagram publishers, Bleacher Report was a top contender for this tactic.
The important thing is to open up the conversation. Content isn’t just a one-way street anymore. Show your audience that you’re listening.

Empower Them to Share and Create

You’ve found your superfans, you’ve recognized their engagement. Now it’s time to empower them to energize your content’s reach. 
This can be done a few ways. You can turn your users into content creators, by featuring their own creations or thoughts. Millennials trust User Generated Content 50 percent more than any other kind of content, according to a study from Crowdtap and Ipsos.
So how are brands and publishers featuring UGC? Nissan’s bulk of engagement on social comes from showcasing fans’ photos of their cars. INSIDER travel uses video from users on Instagram to take viewers around the world. Buzzfeed empowers their community to create posts.
Even more serious names are getting involved. Getty Images now hosts a grant program for aspiring photographers on Instagram.
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Digital native Love What Matters uses their Facebook page to showcase user submissions of positive, heartwarming stories. The above video, a fan submission, drove over 473,000 likes/reactions, 526,000 shares, and 39,000 comments.
You can also provide initiatives for sharing. The Skimm, a daily newsletter geared toward Millennials, gives perks to those who share, Skimm Ambassadors. They even provide a sharing ‘cheat-sheet‘ to get their fans started. 

Commemorating birthdays of Skimm readers and Ambassadors in their newsletter is one such perk. 
There are other incentives you can provide. Offer them sneak peeks into your new content early so that they can build buzz and provide feedback.

Turn the Spotlight on Your Audience

Your followers are not only your audience but a resource too. By using your fans as a sounding board and source of content, you can learn more about the type of content they value.
Interactivity leads to community. Your readers want to interact with the content they’re consuming. Letting them into the conversation can foster deeper engagements and even extend the life of your stories as users spin off content into new directions.
This leads to a growing audience and a new lifecycle for content as your followers are inspired by what’s being produced by their peers and join in themselves.