What makes Instagram content shareable?
Ah, the Instagram DMs. Both a spring of wonder and cesspool of shitposts.
If you’re like most users, you probably have a small group of people you’re constantly sending content back and forth to. Funny stuff, enlightening stuff, cute stuff, encouraging stuff…all the stuff, really.
What if I told you it didn’t just have to be ‘fun stuff’ that was shareable, and your business content can be shareable, too?
But first…
Why should you care if your content is shareable?
Because sharing is how content gets in front of new people.
According Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, the ranking factor that carries the most weight in deciding whether or not a post gets shown to a new audience is “sends via DM.”
Translation: the content hitting the most private inboxes is more likely to get shown to a bigger audience.
Since 2023, Mosseri has been talking about the shift in user behavior on Instagram, and how more and more people are sending things to each other and engaging in DMs, not just commenting and liking in public—and the organization wants to lean into that.
Why? Because this is where connection happens, he says. The people you know are the ones who are going to know what you love. When they send you a post, it’s a signal that the content is funny, or useful, or impressive, or a number of other things.
Hear it from the man himself:
Share-worthy content to inspire your business strategy
I’ve managed lots of social media accounts over the past few years, and shareability has been big on my mind—but when you’re running a Serious Business™️, the first thing you think is probably, “Yeah, but I can’t make stuff that interesting for my company.”
Well. Because I am a Certified Task-Oriented Fuddy-Duddy®, I get a lot of business content sent to me, and I send it to a lot of people. And it doesn’t hurt that I’m always on the lookout for content that can be adapted for businesses.
Now. I’m not going to sit here and give you a walkthrough explaining how to make your business content interesting—the truth is, each organization is unique and there’s absolutely no one-size-fits-all solution.
So instead, I’m going to take you on a quick walk through recent DMs and explain why these were shareable, and maybe inspire you on ways to adapt them for your business.
#1: Explaining drivetrain
Okay, so I’ve seen a few iterations of this since originally sending it to my husband and my sister, and not everyone is crawling around in the snow, but they’ve all been wildly effective in explaining the difference between all types of drivetrains.
Why it was worth sharing: As the opposite of a car nerd, I thought this was such a practical, useful, and easy to understand drivetrain. I mean, you hear ads all the time and you listen to your husband and his friends talk about off-roading (…just me?), but when you’re only casually paying attention, it doesn’t sink in. After seeing this, I get it.
#2: How to answer “walk me through your resume”
I LOVE talking heads like this: unpolished (aka, not in a studio with a fancy camera and equipment), useful on-screen text that doesn’t interfere with captions, and well-structured information.
The script is an easy format:
Here’s a question you’ll get in an interview and why it’s asked
Here’s why answering it well should matter to you
Here’s three things you can do to answer better, with examples.
She has her phone on a tripod, a ring light as her light source, and maybe two different setups. The information is gold and the setup/sound doesn’t get in the way. I also like that it’s a tight medium frame—to me, that’s one of the most immersive talking head framing techniques.
Why it was worth sharing: When you have a friend looking for a job, you want to help them any way you can. And when you haven’t interviewed in a while, you can feel completely out of the game. But honestly, anyone in the job hunt—especially in today’s climate—can benefit from practical, well-laid-out tips like this.
#3: You shouldn’t buy this light
This was originally served to me as an ad, and I immediately saved/sent it to my husband. (If I wasn’t attached to my beautifully patina’d antique brass desk lamp, I would have bought one of these for myself, but alas.)
I’ll admit that I hate the ‘de-influencing’ style—it just feels like a cheesy approach in this context—but I was able to put my snark aside because it so clearly explains every product feature and tells you why you should buy this light.
Not only that, I’m almost positive it was filmed on an iPhone and likely edited in CapCut. It has that handheld, unpolished, not-try-hard quality to it that doesn’t immediately repel you from watching. The quality of acting makes you wonder for a moment if it’s some content creator’s comedy skit. That alone was enough to stop me from scrolling past.
Why it was worth sharing: Not only am I trying to encourage myself to make more videos for social, but my lighting suuuucks on my video calls. I wanted to send this to my husband as an option, because anything that’s that expensive, we talk about first—and this so succinctly put together the value proposition. (And interestingly enough, one of their marketing talking points is, “We know it’s expensive but it’s worth it.”)
#4: High neurotics/low neurotics lecture
The next is something I call ‘stage content’—meaning, content made from a speech someone gave on a stage. There’s something about it that makes this woman feel instantly more authoritative, isn’t there? I mean, she’s a fabulously engaging speaker, too, so I’m not surprised to see she has an audience.
Again, the content is really well organized—”you have to have a high and low neurotic on your team,” she says right off the bat. Two things immediately pop into my head to make me keep watching: 1) why? and 2) what’s the difference? She answers it all immediately.
I think there’s one camera being used here, which makes it easier to capture. On the editing side, while the presentation comes together and the point is easy to grasp, I do think the editing is a little all over the place (if it was me, I would have avoided showing the landscape-oriented slides; it just takes away from it). Again, though—it’s not bad enough to get in the way of the message.
Why it was worth sharing: I’m the type of person who loves to lead and grow teams, and my friends know I’m always trying to grow and learn in that area. This was a whole new way of thinking about all the types of people it takes to keep an organization moving.
A last thought for the content doubters
One of the coolest things about the age of social media that we’re currently in is that it feels like all things are possible. It’s giving brands the agency and permission to be a little flexible—similar to how I talked about Burberry in last week’s post.
So if you’re constantly bombarding yourself with, no, we can’t do that, I want you take a moment and think instead: well, what if we could do that?
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