Share-Ability – Ask Yourself is This Shareable?

I mentioned shareability in my last post and got to wondering if most of you know what this means, on a surface level it seem easy and I certainly gave a nice big hint in my description

However shareability is more important than you know and here I am going to introduce yet another piece of social media jargon to help explain – social proof.

Social Proof deserves an entire blog post of it’s own and I will certainly be writing it on this blog challenge, however the quickest explanation is this – social proof is word of mouth on steroids, it proves that you are shareable and therefore trusted, respected and recommendable!

Together Shareability and Social Proof form a duo of online and social media success that cannot be beat, and taking advantage of the mindset that truly owning these two as daily marketing goals will bring to your business needs to be a top priority for any business wanting to take advantage of social media networking and marketing.

Now let’s get back to the first part of this dynamic duo and the subject of this post – Shareability:

• ‘Like’-able ( pat on the back): Facebook‘s ubiqitous ‘Like’ button is all over the web and now we can like with just a click so the first thing to check for  in your shareability check list is – is your content ‘Likeable. Likeability is the first and easiest step to take as it easiest to attain being likeable is extremely important as no matter where on the web someone ‘Like’s your content it will end up as a post on their Facebook wall for all to see that they have read and approved of your content enough to like it – this is your first recommendation!
• Shareable (a round of applause): a step up from Likeable due to the extra effort needed to share someone’s content or link, this is such a great accolade and of course recommendation or word of mouth. When your content is good enough to be fully shareable the reader has take the time to coy the link to it and post it for you on social media. They may have just clicked ‘Share’ on Facebook or RT on Twitter but they have taken that time to do so and this in itself is just like recieving a round of applause.
• Quoteable (introducing you onto their stage): when you are quotable someone else has taken some of your content or something you have said and put this into their content in some way i.e. a blog post with your video, audio or a quote from your online content and then written their own content around it based on a similar subject, they are in effect introducing you onto their stage to their audience and this is such a great recommendation that they have so much respect for you they are willing and even eager to show you off as an expert on their platform.

There are of course other ways to be shared including testimonials, straight introductions via social media and even the mere fact that some of the people you network with prefer to network with you more often than with others all of this proves your share-ability. In fact I have just been given the chance to submit a social media proposal for a large corporate firm for a government collaboration all because I am shareable.

The marketing firm wanted someone who understood social media as a social platform and rather than go for an agency which had only incorporated a version of social media into their marketing, they were looking for someone who really ‘got it’ and had that sharebility factor. I was chosen because of the chatter on my Facebook profile and page’s where it was clearly seen how valued and respected I am to the community I have build around myself.

The question to ask yourself now is, “How shareable is my content?” and “How shareable am I?” and then take a good hard look at your content. Ask yourself if someone else had posted this would I share it? Be ruthless with yourself, there is so much content out there you HAVE to find a way to stand out from the crowd – like a purple cow amongst fields of brown cows as Seth Godin would say…

More about this down the line” Part 1: Share-ability – Part 2: Social Proof – Part 3: Putting It All Together all coming soon to a blog near you!