You write something you’re proud of. You hit publish. And then… crickets. No shares, no comments, barely any views.
Yeah, we’ve been there too. Creating content that actually gets shared isn’t about luck—it’s about understanding what makes people click that share button in the first place.
Here’s the thing: shareable content doesn’t happen by accident. It taps into specific emotional triggers and practical needs that make your readers think “my friends need to see this.” We’re going to walk through what actually works, based on what we’ve seen succeed across thousands of Badass Network blogs.
Prerequisites
- Access to your Badass Network blog
- Basic understanding of creating blog posts
- Willingness to experiment with different content formats
Why People Share Content (And Why They Don’t)
Most people share content for one of these reasons: it made them feel something strong, it made them look smart, or it solved a problem they know their friends have too.
Notice what’s missing from that list? “Because it was well-written.” Good writing helps, obviously, but it’s not why people share. They share because the content does something for them beyond just reading it.
So you’ve got two main paths: emotional resonance or practical value. Sometimes you can hit both, but don’t try to be everything to everyone in one post. Pick your lane.
What Makes Content Actually Shareable
The Headline Does More Work Than You Think
Your headline isn’t just a title—it’s the packaging for your entire post. If people don’t click, they definitely won’t share.
We’ve found that headlines with numbers still work. “7 Ways to…” or “23 Things You Didn’t Know About…” feel dated, but they perform because they set expectations. Your reader knows what they’re getting into.
Questions work too, but only if they’re questions your audience is actually asking. “Should You Start a Podcast?” works for bloggers. “What Is a Podcast?” doesn’t, because anyone who doesn’t know that isn’t reading blogs about content creation.
Here’s what usually happens: you write the post first, then slap a title on it at the end. Try the opposite. Write your headline first. If you can’t make it sound interesting in 10 words, your post probably needs a different angle.
Opening Lines That Hook Readers Immediately
You’ve got maybe three sentences to prove this post is worth reading. That’s it. Most people scan the first paragraph and decide whether to bail or keep going.
Start with something specific. “Content marketing is important” loses to “Last Tuesday, I published a post that got 847 shares in six hours” every single time. The first one sounds like every other blog post. The second one makes you wonder what happened.
Don’t bury your point. We see a lot of posts that spend three paragraphs on background before getting to the actual topic. If you’re writing about creating shareable content, don’t spend 200 words defining what “content” means. Your readers already know. Jump in.
Structure That Keeps People Reading
Long paragraphs kill shareability. Not because they’re bad writing—they’re just harder to read on phones, which is where most people consume content these days.
Break things up. Aim for 2-3 sentences per paragraph, maybe 4 if they’re short sentences. Use subheadings every few paragraphs so people can scan. If someone has to scroll for 10 seconds before seeing another heading, you’ve lost them.
Lists work because they’re easy to process. “Here are five things” tells your brain exactly what to expect. You can skim the list, find the parts that matter to you, and ignore the rest. Narrative paragraphs don’t give you that luxury—you have to read everything to know what’s in there.
But don’t make everything a list. Mix it up. Some sections work better as narrative, especially when you’re telling a story or explaining something complex. Use lists for actionable tips, options, or examples. Use paragraphs for context and explanation.
The Emotional Angle (Without Being Manipulative)
Content that makes people feel something gets shared more than content that just informs. But there’s a difference between emotional resonance and emotional manipulation.
Good emotional content: “I tried three different productivity systems before finding one that actually worked for my ADHD brain. Here’s what I learned.”
Manipulative emotional content: “Are you DESTROYING your productivity with these TERRIBLE habits?? (Number 3 will SHOCK you!)”
See the difference? The first one shares a real experience. The second one uses anxiety and exaggeration to grab attention. People see through that now.
Stories help here. Abstract advice doesn’t stick. “Engage with your audience” is forgettable. “I spent two hours every morning replying to comments, and my engagement rate tripled in three months” is specific enough to remember and share.
Make It Useful Right Now
Theory is interesting. Actionable advice gets shared.
If someone can finish reading your post and immediately use what you taught them, you’ve hit the shareable sweet spot. This doesn’t mean every post needs to be a tutorial, but it does mean you should give people something concrete they can do.
“Content should be authentic” is nice. “Write like you’re explaining it to a friend over coffee—use contractions, ask questions, admit when you don’t know something” is actionable. One makes the reader nod along. The other makes them think “I can do that today.”
Checklists, templates, and frameworks are gold here. People save these, reference them later, and share them with others who could use them. A solid checklist in your post basically guarantees some shares.
The Visual Element You Can’t Skip
Nobody shares a wall of text. They just don’t.
You need images, but not just any images. Stock photos of people pointing at laptops don’t add value—they’re just decoration. Screenshots, diagrams, charts, before/after examples, these actually enhance understanding.
If you’re explaining a process, show it. “Click the Share button in the top right” works better with a screenshot showing where that button is. “Our traffic increased significantly” works better with a graph showing the actual curve.
Most Badass Network blogs that get high share rates include at least one image every 300-400 words. Doesn’t have to be fancy—just something to break up the text and add context.
Types of Content That Get Shared Most
Different formats work for different audiences. Here’s what we’ve seen perform well:
How-to guides and tutorials get saved and shared because they solve specific problems. When someone asks “How do I do X?” and you can reply with a link to your comprehensive guide, that’s shareability.
Contrarian takes get shared when they’re well-argued. “Actually, You Don’t Need to Post Every Day” will get shared by people who feel relieved to hear it. But you need to back it up—hot takes without substance just annoy people.
Data-driven posts get shared in professional contexts. If you’ve done original research or compiled data from multiple sources, that’s shareable because it provides new information people can reference.
Personal experience posts resonate when they’re honest. “How I Built My Blog to 10K Monthly Visitors” gets shared if you actually share the real process, including what didn’t work. Skip the highlight reel, show the behind-the-scenes.
Resource roundups get bookmarked and shared because they save people time. “47 Free Stock Photo Sites That Don’t Suck” is immediately useful. Make sure your roundups are actually curated—if you’re just listing everything you found in five minutes of Googling, it’s not valuable enough to share.
The Share-Worthy Formula We Use
Here’s what we’ve found works consistently across different blog topics and audiences:
Start with a specific promise
“Here’s how to get more shares” beats “Some thoughts on content creation.”
Deliver early
Deliver on that promise in the first third of the post. Don’t make people read to the end to get the payoff—give them value early, then add more depth.
Use concrete examples
Use concrete examples instead of abstract advice. Show, don’t just tell.
Make it scannable
Someone should be able to skim your post in 30 seconds and get the main points.
End with a clear next step
What should the reader do with this information?
This isn’t a magic formula—you’ll need to adapt it to your style and topic. But it’s a solid starting framework.
Common Mistakes That Kill Shareability
- Writing for everyone. When you try to appeal to everyone, you end up resonating with no one. Niche down. Write for a specific person with a specific problem.
- Being too vague. “Improve your content strategy” isn’t shareable. “Use the 70/20/10 rule: 70% proven topics, 20% experimental, 10% wildcard” is specific enough to be useful.
- Forgetting the headline. You can write an incredible post, but if the headline is boring, nobody will read it to find out it’s good.
- No clear point. Every post should have one main idea. If you’re trying to cover five different topics in one post, you’ll end up covering none of them well enough to be shareable.
- Ignoring your audience’s actual questions. Write about what your readers are actually struggling with, not what you think they should care about. Check your comments, your emails, your social media messages—what are people asking you?
How to Know What Your Audience Wants to Share
Look at what they’re already sharing. Seriously, this is the easiest research you can do.
Check the most popular posts on blogs similar to yours. What topics come up repeatedly? What formats work? You’re not copying—you’re identifying patterns in what your audience responds to.
Pay attention to your own analytics. Which of your posts got the most social shares? What did those posts have in common? Was it the topic, the format, the headline, or something else?
Ask directly. “What topics would you like me to cover?” in your newsletter or social media usually gets good responses. People will tell you what they want if you just ask.
Look at trending topics in your niche, but don’t chase every trend. Ask yourself: “Is this relevant to my audience? Can I add something new to this conversation? Will this still be useful in six months?” If the answers are yes, yes, and yes, it’s probably worth writing about.
Making Sharing Easy (The Technical Stuff)
You can write the most shareable content in the world, but if your readers can’t easily share it, you’re losing opportunities.
Make sure your share buttons actually work. Click them yourself on different devices. We’ve seen too many blogs where the share count is broken or the buttons don’t do anything on mobile.
Include pre-written social share text if possible. “Tweet this” links with pre-filled text get clicked more than empty share buttons. Make it easy—your readers are busy.
Create quotable moments. If you’ve got a particularly insightful line, make it stand out. Bold it, put it in a callout box, something. This is what people will screenshot and share.
Optimize your meta descriptions. When someone shares your link, what shows up in the preview? That little description matters more than you’d think. Make it compelling.
Your Badass Network blog already includes basic social sharing functionality, but you can customize how your posts appear when shared by paying attention to your featured images and post excerpts. These are what show up in social media previews.
What To Do If Your Content Isn’t Getting Shared
First, don’t panic. Share rates are lower across the board than they used to be—algorithms have changed, people’s sharing behavior has changed. You’re not necessarily doing anything wrong.
That said, here are some things to check:
Even great content needs promotion. Share it on your own social channels, mention it in your newsletter, tell people it exists. Nobody will magically find and share your post if they don’t know it’s there.
Some posts take weeks or months to gain traction. Evergreen content especially can have a slow burn—it gets found through search and shared gradually over time.
Sometimes we write what we want to write, not what our readers want to read. Both have value, but only one tends to get shared.
If you wrote something six months ago that’s still relevant, update it with new information and share it again. Many people won’t have seen it the first time.
Look at your most shared posts and do more of that. If your tutorial posts get shared but your opinion pieces don’t, that tells you something about what your audience values.
When Shares Don’t Matter (Yeah, Really)
Hot take: sometimes shares aren’t the right metric to care about.
If you’re building an email list, getting newsletter signups might matter more than social shares. If you’re trying to establish expertise, comments and engagement might be more valuable. If you’re selling something, conversions trump everything else.
Think about what you’re actually trying to accomplish. Use shares as one indicator of resonance, but don’t make them the only thing you measure.
What You’ve Accomplished
You now understand the key elements that make content shareable—emotional resonance, practical value, clear structure, and strong headlines. More importantly, you know how to identify what your specific audience wants to share and how to give it to them.
Creating shareable content is part psychology, part technique, and part understanding your audience better than they understand themselves. It takes practice. Your first few attempts might flop. That’s normal. Keep experimenting with different angles, formats, and topics until you find what clicks with your readers.
Next step: Look at your three most recent posts. Which one do you think has the most share potential? Consider updating it with some of the techniques we’ve covered here—better headline, clearer structure, more actionable advice—and reshare it. See what happens.
The more you practice this, the more intuitive it becomes. You’ll start to feel which ideas have share potential and which ones are better suited for other goals.
Want to Learn More?
- Writing Your First Blog Post — Basic post creation if you’re just getting started
- SEO-Friendly Blog Titles — Headline formulas that work
- Understanding Your Blog Analytics — Track what’s working and what isn’t
- Building an Email List — Convert readers into subscribers
Need Help?
Having trouble getting your content shared? We’re here to help:
- Contact Badass Network Support
- Include examples of posts you’ve tried
- Tell us about your target audience and what you’re trying to accomplish