According to The New York Times Customer Insight Group in a new whitepaper, The Psychology of Sharing, there are 5 key reasons why people share online:
- Value – To bring valuable and educating content to others
- Identity – To define ourselves to others
- Network – To grow and nourish our relationships
- Involvement – Self-fulfillment, value and involvement in the world
- Causes – To spread the word out about causes or brands
The New York Times report is fantastic research and lends itself to the work we do here on Martech. While we monetize our publication, the site itself isn’t self-sufficient (although we’re getting there). Martech Zone provides our agency leads. Marketing Technology, Sales Technology and Online Technology companies come to us to build their web presence and grow their market share. They do that because of the foundation of trust and value we have provided through our articles here.
We’re quite peculiar about the content that we choose to write and share about and work to make much of it shareable content. How do we curate sources (like the New York Times findings), write our content, and make it shareable?
- Platform – Before we even begin writing, we’ve made sure that our site supports sharing. Featured images and rich snippets ensure our content is optimized for social sharing. Missing this foundation can ruin even the best content from being shared. No one wants to have to work at sharing your content. Make it easy.
- Controversial Topics – Controversial data, rants, and stopping misinformation are shared above average. Those controversial topics often put us at odds with industry leaders but gain the respect of peers and potential clients.
- Rich Imagery – Adding an image paints a fantastic image in someone’s mind. Take a look at the illustration that we built for this post. It paints a clear picture that drives curiosity and provides a destination in the event it makes it out there without a link.
- Impactful Content – If Google declares a significant change that can impact our readers, we share the solution to keep our readers ahead of the curve. We don’t share industry news like investments, position changes, or mergers that don’t impact our readers.
- Valuable Content – If content can increase your return on investment or reduce your costs, we love sharing that solution or product. This shareable content drives a ton of visits to our publication.
- Discovery – We share overviews of sales and marketing-related technologies every week on the marketing technology blog so that you can become aware that there are solutions out there that were built specifically for the problems of your organization. Discovering these apps has made us a popular resource for agencies, marketing and sales departments.
- Education – It’s not enough to tease a solution, we always attempt to wrap any discoveries with advice for our readers to be more successful. Content that makes their lives easier is shared. Great advice that doesn’t cost money is difficult to find these days!
Our tagline is Research, Discover, Learn and those goals drive the sharing of our content. Our reach continues to grow double-digits without having to pay for promotion – a pretty impressive statistic. Of course, it took us a decade to learn these strategies. And of course – we share them with you our readers! We want you to be as successful.
Feel free to share the image we created to show why people are motivated to share online:
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