A children’s nursery posts on social media every week. The posts are friendly and professional: a reminder about the holiday schedule, a photo of the new garden, a polite note about healthy lunchboxes. Parents like them. Hardly anyone shares them.
Then one Friday, a teacher posts a short video of a three-year-old seeing snow for the first time on a rare cold morning: the gasp, the wide eyes, the giggle. By Monday it has been shared hundreds of times, and the nursery has three new enquiries from families who saw it on a friend’s feed.
The nursery’s team is delighted but slightly puzzled. The snow video wasn’t planned or polished. Why did it travel so far when months of careful posts barely moved? Research on what makes people pass content on offers a surprisingly clear explanation.
One Like insight: People share content that makes them feel something strongly enough to act.
What makes content travel
In 2012, Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman of the Wharton School published a study in the Journal of Marketing Research called “What Makes Online Content Viral?” They analysed nearly 7,000 New York Times articles published over three months and examined which ones made the newspaper’s “most emailed” list, controlling for factors such as how prominently each article was featured.
On average, positive content was shared more than negative content. But the more important finding concerned the intensity of feeling. Content that evokes high-arousal positive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions was more likely to be shared. Content that evoked low-arousal emotions, such as sadness, was less likely to be shared. Articles that were surprising, interesting or practically useful were also shared more.
The researchers backed up their analysis with experiments showing that the level of emotional activation, not just whether a feeling was positive or negative, drove people’s willingness to pass content on. Their explanation is that high-arousal emotions are energising. They make people want to do something, and sharing is something.
The study focused on news articles, and sharing behaviour on today’s platforms is also shaped by algorithms. But the core idea, that emotionally activating, useful or surprising content tends to travel further, has held up well.
Shareable without being manipulative
The research could be misread as a licence to provoke outrage, since anger travels well. That would be a mistake for most small businesses. Content designed to make people angry may spread, but it rarely builds the kind of warm, trusting reputation that brings customers back. The more useful lessons are positive ones.
Aim for awe and delight. Real moments that make people gasp, smile or say “wow”: a remarkable transformation, a child’s first experience, a beautifully finished piece of work, a surprising behind-the-scenes look.
Be genuinely useful. Practical tips people want to pass on to friends, such as a clear guide, a clever shortcut or a checklist, are shared because they make the sharer look helpful.
Surprise people. Content that overturns an assumption or reveals something unexpected about your trade gives people something to talk about.
Show real people. As we explored in Why Brands Are Adding Mess on Purpose, unpolished, human moments often feel more authentic than perfect production.
Anxiety can be shared too, for example a warning about a common scam or safety risk. Used carefully and honestly, that can be genuinely helpful. Used to frighten people into buying, it erodes trust.
[Infographic placement] Which emotions get shared? A two-by-two grid. Horizontal axis: Negative ↔ Positive. Vertical axis: Low energy ↔ High energy. High-energy positive (top right): Awe, amusement, excitement: shared most. High-energy negative (top left): Anger, anxiety: shared, but risky for brands. Low-energy positive (bottom right): Contentment: shared less. Low-energy negative (bottom left): Sadness: shared least. Caption: Berger and Milkman (2012), nearly 7,000 New York Times articles.
Planning for shareability
Look back at your last twenty posts or articles. Which ones were shared, commented on or forwarded? For each, ask what feeling it created. Most businesses find their most-shared content made people feel awe, delight or surprise, or gave them something useful to pass on. Their least-shared content was often informative but emotionally flat.
Then build a little more of the successful kind into your plan. You don’t need every post to go viral. Routine updates still have their place. But setting aside one post a week to capture a moment worth sharing, or to offer a genuinely useful tip, can change how far your content travels.
A few questions can help:
- What emotion does each of our posts aim to create?
- Which of our past posts were shared most, and why?
- What moments in our work regularly make people say “wow”?
- What useful knowledge could we give away that people would want to pass on?
Which brings us back to the nursery and its snow video. The routine posts weren’t wrong; they kept parents informed. But the snow video created a feeling of pure delight that parents wanted others to share. Building the habit of capturing those small moments of wonder, alongside the practical updates, could turn the nursery’s feed into something families actively pass on.
Sources
- Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman, “What Makes Online Content Viral?”, Journal of Marketing Research 49(2), 2012.
