New Study Looks at What Motivates Facebook Users to Share Content

What motivates people to share content? This is one of the key questions all content marketers would love to understand more about. And while sharing, in itself, is rarely the end goal, shares do help spread the message and connect your content with a wider audience.

To get a better understanding of what motivates content shares, content strategy group Fractl has conducted a study of what motivates Facebook users, specifically, to share a post. They surveyed more than 2000 Facebook users to gain insight into what inspires them to click Like or Share on The Social Network.

Among their key findings, Fractl’s researchers found that:

• Only 1 out of 10 respondents noted that their primary reason for sharing content was to educate their network, though more than half (55%) noted they do want to share useful content
• Women are 26% more likely to share content more than once a day compared to men, while Baby Boomers are 19% more likely to share more than once per day than any other generation
• 40% of respondents admitted to sharing content to make themselves look good. Users with larger networks (over 500 friends) are 7% more likely to share content that maintains a certain image of themselves

Given the recent reports of declines in personal updates on Facebook, it’s interesting to note the factors that do inspire people to share material with their networks, and what types of posts they are sharing. And the lessons here can provide some great pointers for those trying to create more resonant content – if you want to get more reach, entertainment and utility remain key motivators, along with an understanding of what that content says about the sharer.

Fractl has incorporated the results into an infographic (below) – the full report is available here.

Source: Social Media Today