This week you will:

• Blog about the logic of remixing content and add a picture/infographic.
• Blog about the logic of sharing and add a YouTube video.
• Practice providing feedback on other learners blogs using the intellectual standards.

This week you will create 2 blog posts. First, you will blog about remixing content and add a picture/infographic. Second, you will blog about sharing and add a YouTube video.

This week you provide feedback to other learners week 9 posts, using the intellectual standards. The goal is to work up to the higher higher levels of reasoning which are; logic, significance and fairness. Let's do it!

Please remember, before you begin your activities, read and watch this week's topic summary content.

Whenever you learn, let go and have some fun, don't take yourself too seriously.

Read/watch the following content.

The Psychology of Social Sharing: How to Shape Your Content According to What People Want to Share

There is no magic formula to going viral.

Even if some blogs make getting shared big-time look effortless there simply is no 100% foolproof method to ensure that your content will reach huge audiences and inspire them to pass it on. And that’s a good thing because it means those strategies cannot be abused.

However, going viral isn’t just a matter of throwing content at the wall and seeing what sticks. You can help yourself succeed by shaping your content to encourage social sharing on your social network of choice.

Keep reading to learn what drives people to share, and how to present your content to succeed on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Why Do People Share?

There is a lot that goes into a decision to pass along a piece of content. Sometimes all it comes down to is a fleeting thought: “Susan would like this, I should send it to her.” But there are a lot of other factors that motivate us to share certain types of content. Aled Lewis

Timeliness

Did you know the half-life of a tweet is 16 minutes? While other social networks do not lose their engagement potential quite as rapidly as Twitter, typically the same principle applies.

Perhaps, the best illustration of this is the outpouring of emotion that spreads across social networks when a famous person dies. News articles confirming the death get thousands and thousands of shares. The death of someone whose work you admire can feel achingly personal, and afterwards it seems like everyone has to say their piece. Prince’s death in April of this year generated almost 13 million tweets in just 24 hours. The surge of social activity following Michael Jackson’s death broke Twitter. These examples show just how explosive timely news, especially shocking news, is on social networks, especially Twitter.

Emotion

Emotion is a really strong motivator for sharing content online, but it’s not just any old feeling. A lot of this is driven by positive emotions. In an analysis of the most viral content of 2015, Steve Rayson from Buzzsumo identified the following seven emotions as the strongest for driving social sharing:

• Amusing
• Surprising
• Heartwarming
• Beautiful
• Inspiring
• Warning
• Shocking

As you can see, just two out of seven types of emotion listed above have a negative connotation, and all can trigger a very strong response from the viewer. An earlier study by Buzzsumo and OkDork went so far as to break it down bywhat percentage of the top 10,000 most shared articles fit a particular emotion: The most stand-out emotions here are Amusement/Laughter, which combine to consume nearly a third of the pie, and Awe, which takes up a perfect quarter.

Visual Impact

One of the most commonly shared types of content are list posts full of pictures, or slideshows of incredible images. We share these for many of the emotional reasons I just mentioned – humor, awe, surprise, beauty – and these are the same emotions that draw us into this kind of content when we see it in our newsfeeds. The Guardian’s second most-shared post of 2014 was a photo post containing incredibly high-quality, mostly aerial photos of extreme over-development in action: This piece garnered over 700,000 shares. We share this kind of content because it shocks us, amazes us, scares us, and inspires feelings within us that makes us want to share it with others. Kelsey Heinrichs

Community

As humans, we crave being a part of things. Enterprising content marketers have capitalized on this, crafting articles that celebrate a sense of community.

This isn’t a new idea; I remember receiving email forwards (back when those were actually a thing) that did this. You know the ones – “You know you are from New York when…” The more recent reincarnation of this sort of thing are, of course, in listicle format, with a headline that invites you to learn more.

Some take the idea of “community” very generally. Here’s an example with 41,000 shares from the blog Wait But Why: 10 Types of Odd Friendships You’re Probably Part Of

Most of us can probably identify with something in that post, which is part of why it has been shared so many times. It’s also been shared so much because it is amusing, and because of the great visuals (crudely drawn as they are).

Other posts break us into smaller groups, but not too small – there still needs to be a base of people to share the content, after all. Here’s an example from BuzzFeed that garnered half a million shares: 27 Problems Only Introverts Will Understand

And you can break it down even further – because even a subset of introverts earned this piece over 230,000 shares: 10 Everyday Things Only Extroverted Introverts Will Understand

The point is, each of these target communities of people – broad or narrow – who can relate to the content and pass on to their followers. They share out of a sense of affinity – yes, as an extroverted introvert I totally get that! – but also as an almost unconscious way of defining which communities they belong to.

Idealization

Finally, we curate what we share out of a desire to present an idealized version of ourselves to the world.

Anyone who has ever scrolled through their Facebook feed and experienced FOMO (the Fear Of Missing Out) knows exactly what I mean. Between picture-perfect wedding photos, picturesque beach Instagrams, and iPhone shots of girls’ night, it sometimes seems like everyone has a perfect life – except for you. So we carefully shape our own social media activity to match, sharing content that makes us seem funny, clever, or always well put-together.

This manifests itself differently on every social network, but it is universal. One survey of 2,500 social media users found that 68% share content in order to “define themselves,” but I’m willing to bet that the true percentage is even higher. On Facebook and Instagram, we share our picture-perfect lives and social gatherings. On Pinterest, we carefully catalog our inspirations and aspirations. On Twitter and LinkedIn, we position ourselves as experts, retweeting industry news, interesting facts, and other career-oriented content.

You are what you share

I have a friend who can always be counted on to have a great book recommendation handy. Another who can not only tell you the best available movie currently in theatres, but confidently stand behind his recommendations.

And some people are eager to share a link to an article or idea that's worth reading.

Most people, though, hesitate. "What if the other person doesn't like it..."

The fear of being judged is palpable, and the digital trail we leave behind makes it feel more real and more permanent. We live in an ever-changing culture, and that culture is changed precisely by the ideas we engage with and the ones we choose to share.

Sharing an idea you care about is a generous way to change your world for the better.

The culture we will live in next month is a direct result of what people like us share today. The things we share and don't share determine what happens next.

As we move away from the top-down regime of promoted movies, well-shelved books and all sorts of hype, the recommendation from person to person is now the most powerful way we have to change things.

It takes guts to say, "I read this and you should too." The guts to care enough about our culture (and your friends) to move it forward and to stand for something.

We'll judge you most on whether you care enough to change things.

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