Recent posts by Twitter/X owner Elon Musk and the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri have revealed a shift in what is important when we’re thinking about our next post: make your content sharable.

Instead of “posting and hoping”, or just “broadcasting” by telling users about an announcement or story, we need to place far greater emphasis on triggering an emotional reaction, or making it feel practical, new or relevant to that audience.

As you’ve probably seen, be it with ‘for you’ tabs on Twitter/X, pages on TikTok, or mixed up in your feed on Instagram and Facebook, all social platforms are moving towards more algorithmically-driven approaches as a way to try to increase the amount of time you spend and engage on that app.

That’s partly because we have generally stopped being so public in our reposts and commenting, preferring to share posts privately on direct messages or messing apps like WhatsApp.

Both Musk and Mosseri have publicly emphasised how important sending a post can be as a signal to the mysterious algorithm, to boost its visibility and increase its reach.

Twitter/X on what the algorithm sees when you share posts

Elon explained it in his trademark way – partly in response to the backlash over the type of content appearing in users’ for you tabs:

Read: Should my company stay on Twitter/X – or leave?

Instagram explains why you should focus on sendable and sharable content

And this is how Adam Mosseri explained the importance of “thinking about creating something that people would want to send to a friend”:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Adam Mosseri (@mosseri)

Read: What young people think of as ‘news’ on Instagram

How to make your social posts and content more sharable

So rather than focus on telling followers and viewers something, focus on making them feel something: for example, happy, sad/empathetic, angry (though I would be careful to not overuse this), entertained, informed or something that helps them in their lives.

You may see this as just an extension of the old adage of “don’t make boring content” – which is true! But on social, as in the rest of the media environment, where there is so much more content than ever before, and the competition for people’s attention is greater than ever, it’s important to really think carefully how it would appeal to your target audience – beyond those that already follow you.