A shared post is worth far more than a seen one, because a friend passing it on carries a trust no advert has. So it helps to know what people actually share. The short answer: they pass on things that make them feel something.
Two researchers, Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman, studied thousands of articles to see what got shared most. The driver was not usefulness or luck. It was high feeling: things that amused, amazed or fired people up travelled far more than flat or merely pleasant ones (Berger and Milkman, What Makes Online Content Viral?, Journal of Marketing Research). A post that leaves people cold, however tidy, goes nowhere. A post that makes them laugh, or gasp, or nod hard, gets sent to a friend.
For a small shop, the feeling to reach for is usually warmth or a genuine laugh. A florist filming the face of a customer picking up flowers for their mum. A café’s honest, funny sign about a Monday. A builder showing a grim before and a satisfying after. These move people, so people move them along.
But there is a trap, and it catches a lot of shops. A post can be funny or striking and still sell nothing, if the feeling does not point back at what you do. The advertising man David Ogilvy was blunt about it: cleverness that does not move the product is not good advertising, it is entertainment. A joke everyone enjoys but nobody connects to your trade is a wasted day.
April Fools’ Day is the clearest test of this. A funny fake announcement gets shared far and wide and does nothing for you, unless the gag is about the very thing you sell. You can see this on the April Fools’ Day run-up: the joke has to point straight back at your shop, so the laugh and the reminder land together. Make the feeling and the message the same thing.
So when you want a post to travel, ask two things. Does this make someone feel something real, a laugh, a warmth, a small wow? And if a friend shared it, would they still be, in effect, mentioning my shop? If the answer to both is yes, it can spread and still work for you. If it only passes the first, you might get a busy day and no new customers.
A caution worth stating plainly. You cannot force a post to spread, and chasing shares can lead you somewhere silly, off-brand or untrue. Do not fake a feeling and do not claim something that is not so. A genuine moment from your real shop is your best material, because it is true, and true is what people are glad to pass on.
A hairdresser saw this happen by accident. A short clip of a nervous bride’s reaction when the chair spun round to the mirror was shared all over the town, not because it was clever, but because the moment was genuinely moving, and it plainly happened in her salon. One real feeling, pointed straight at the work, did more than a year of tidy adverts.
And remember most posts will not spread, and that is fine. Sharing is the occasional bonus on top of the steady job of turning up and being familiar. Aim for real feeling when you have it, keep it pointed at what you do, and now and then one will travel and bring you people a paid advert never could.
When a real moment happens, the funny sign, the delighted customer, the before and after, catch it there and then. Open What should I post?, tell it what happened, and put up the caption and the words for your picture it gives back while the feeling is still fresh.