When curating your social media content strategy, don’t waste time creating and promoting content your audience simply doesn’t care about. Instead, put your energy into identifying which types of content do well on social media, and then create and promote it accordingly. Here are a few of the most-shared types of content you can work with.

Comprehensive Guides

Long-form content provides multiple benefits for your marketing strategy, and it’s one of the best types of content to share across the internet. Content ranging from 2,000 to 10,000 words offers amazing SEO properties helping your company rank higher in search engine results.

Long blog posts or guides also help to sell your products. When you can explain in complete, expert detail why a product is worthwhile, consumers are more likely to purchase from you rather than a competitor.

These guides are particularly useful in creating momentum and raising sales for products that consumers often don’t know a lot about. Here’s a great example of a comprehensive guide from an online retailer that sells fireplaces, mantels, and accessories. It goes into great detail about maintaining a fireplace to make it easier for consumers to grasp. This content is much needed for any consumer owning a fireplace and is therefore more likely to gain attention on social media.

How-To Listicles

Listicles will never go out of style in terms of shareable content. Numbered lists with useful information and how-tos make the content easy to consume, and the average consumer can benefit. If a consumer finds a piece of content useful and easy to read, they’re much more likely to share that content with others.

You can create useful how-to content to help promote what you’re selling. Make it simple with a few easy-to-do steps that involve your products. If it’s entertaining or funny, you’ll gain extra points in the social media category.

Content-Heavy Infographics

There have been many bad infographics created to explain complex pieces of information. Some are laden with incomprehensible numbers and graphs while others are too basic to be interesting. You need an infographic that’s brimming with attractive graphics and consumable information.

Infographics are particularly effective for industries that work with heavy data. For example, medical industries often deal with facts, statistics, and other information to help individuals feel secure in using a provider’s services. Infographics can generate significant traffic among a specific target audience in this case.

Branded Memes

There’s nothing like coming across a hilarious and accurate meme to describe a trending situation! You’re likely aware of several well-known events or topics in your industry that you could use to create a funny meme and gain momentum. Always be respectful of your audience and stay away from topics or opinions that would offend them.

When creating a meme, be sure to include your brand. Stamp it with your logo and/or company name so that as it circulates the internet, people can trace it back to you. It’s a great tool for generating brand awareness and taking your shot at going viral.

You can also generate interactive attention by asking individuals to create memes for you. Ask followers to “caption this photo,” generating plenty of user content and establishing your brand even further.

Content That Evokes Emotion

Usually, a person shares a piece of content on social media because it evokes a strong emotion. Any type of emotion (sadness, surprise, empathy, anger, passion, amusement, joy, etc.) will induce a share, but some emotions are associated with shares much more often than others.

According to CoSchedule research, content that inspires a happy emotion such as “awe”, laughter, amusement, or joy elicited up to 25 times as many shares as negative emotions like sadness or surprise.

Seek to create content that will evoke a positive emotion. If you truly know your audience, you can find ways to reach them in an uplifting and positive way with any form of content.

Creating and marketing viral content on social media is within your reach. It’s all about tapping into your target market and learning what gets shared. Then, you can use various mediums like infographics, blog posts, videos, memes, etc. to deliver the information you have. From there, your devoted audience will do the rest to build your brand.