Why social media shares matter in 2025 (+10 engagement tips)

Social media shares help expand your reach and grow your social following. The more people share your posts, the more you inform social media algorithms that your content resonates with users—and the more the platform promotes it.

If no one shares a post, you might worry that your social media marketing strategy isn’t working. But don’t let no-shares discourage you. With 48% of consumers engaging more with brands online than six months ago, now is the ideal time to revisit your social media strategy.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to boost shareability with insights from the latest statistics and reporting, and see real-life examples of how to increase shares.

Why social media shares matter

Before you focus on increasing shares, here’s what they do for your brand:

• Increased visibility from social media algorithm boosts
• Expanded organic reach through word-of-mouth
• Greater exposure across a social media platform
• Enhanced social proof, credibility—and even some FOMO
• More user-generated content as engagement grows
• Higher sales and conversion of users to customers

Social network shares signal that your content resonates with your audience. Shares amplify your reach and add social proof. The more people see your content from people they know, the more likely they will engage with your brand.

The challenge: you can’t force organic shares. If you want users to authentically share your posts, you need strategies that encourage shares and meet your social media goals.

So, how do you get a user to share your post? It starts before you hit publish.

What makes content shareable?

To boost share counts of your social media content, make sure it’s relevant, engaging and valuable. The good news? There are simple tactics to encourage more users to hit that share button.

The first move? Focus on share-worthy formats that usually get more engagement. Sprout Social’s 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report reveals a compelling trend: Users prefer to interact with short videos, 15 seconds or less. Instagram is a good example. Reels and Stories are user favorites.

Visuals like videos and images take the lead across most platforms. But this practically universal rule doesn’t apply to every platform. LinkedIn, for example, is one of the few platforms that has seen strong user engagement with text posts and images—a trend that might shift over time. Keeping a watchful eye on your target audience’s preferences on each platform is key.

So, what kind of content grabs attention?

According to Sprout’s Q2 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey, 66% of social users point to “edutainment” as the most engaging brand content.

Use videos and interactive formats to create valuable content that is as informative as it is entertaining. Users are more inclined to pass along content that entertains them and teaches them something worthwhile.

Here are other tactics you can use to boost shareability:

• Connect with emotions through storytelling.
• Offer tons of value your audience will share with their network so they can benefit, too.
• Capitalize on viral trends and current events.
• Leverage user-generated content (UGC).

So, you’ve laid the foundation for shareable social media content by focusing on engaging formats and prioritizing value. Now, let’s dive into the key strategies and best practices that unlock more social shares.

10 strategies and best practices for increasing social shares

You know what makes posts shareable and why it matters. Now, it’s time to act. Below are useful tactics to try for your brand:

1. Prioritize shareable content

If you want your followers to share your content, make it hard not to. Tap into visually appealing and interactive content.

Videos and infographics can draw users in more than the average photo or text posts. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram thrive on viral content, making them great sources of inspiration. Based on the research covered above, videos are a great place to start.

Image Source: Instagram

Infographics (visual representations of data) also spread quickly on social media. Because they’re so easy to digest and don’t require much reading, they have much higher sharing potential than a traditional post.

2. Tap into emotional storytelling

According to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™, the brand content traits social media users value most are authenticity and relatability.

A powerful story can drive shares because it humanizes a brand. For instance, showcasing employees and customers, and their connection to your product or service, means sharing real experiences:

• Customers trying your product for the first time
• Unique stories that made a customer’s day (like a birthday surprise or unexpected act of kindness)
• Behind-the-scenes moments highlighting your team’s passion and personalities

New Balance, for example, tapped into the NYC marathon’s excitement by featuring happy customers running the race in their gear. The videos captured the energy of the cheering runners in their New Balance shoes, and organically motivated marathon participants to share the video and engage with the brand.

The good news? You don’t need a massive production budget or tons of case studies to produce content. Powerful stories and real, authentic experiences are all around you, waiting for you to spot them.

Avocado Grill’s social media team, for example, celebrated the restaurant’s 10th anniversary by featuring their founder and owner, Chef Julien Gremaud. Chef Gremaud shared a bit about Avocado Grill’s story and upcoming celebration, and users got to connect a face to the brand. The post generated buzz, encouraging shares, posts and tagging about the event.

Social media marketers can build shares—and trust—by turning a spotlight on users and customers with authentic stories. Clinique, for example, used “real faces” and “real results” in a post about rosacea, showcasing three different customer experiences.

Marketers can also leverage UGC by sharing or featuring a creator’s content. For instance, Trudy Leung’s TikTok about her visit to her favorite coffee shop drew her audience into the experience. Her engaging storytelling made viewers feel like they could savor her drink and taste the pastries. Her post resonated with viewers and earned over 800 shares.

3. Post at the best time for maximum visibility

Maybe this is a no-brainer, but timing matters. To maximize engagement, post when your target audience is most active. Sprout’s in-depth guide breaks down the best times to post, which include:

• General guideline: Tuesdays through Thursdays, between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., are generally the sweet spot to post across all platforms.
• Facebook: Focus on peak engagement times, like weekdays between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
• Instagram: Post on weekdays between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., aiming for peaks. When possible, post on Tuesdays and Wednesdays between 10 a.m. and noon.
• LinkedIn: Publish throughout the week, prioritizing Tuesdays and Wednesdays until 4 p.m.
• TikTok: Add videos Tuesdays through Fridays, between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. For peak engagement, focus on Wednesdays and Thursdays between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m.

4. Use employee advocacy to expand reach

Companies with employee advocacy strategies can increase organic reach by 85% and save up to $233k on social ad spending within three years.

By encouraging employees to share content, ideas and hot takes on social networks like Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok, you spread brand awareness using some of your most passionate fans—your team.

SparkToro’s VP of Marketing, Amanda Natividad, did this in a recent LinkedIn post announcing a new blog post. The post offered clear and interesting information and racked up likes and comments. Plus, those shares helped expand its reach.

5. Encourage shares through content formats and CTAs

Stop hoping for shares and start driving them. Tie a clear call to action to genuine value for users.

Make sharing easy and fun, and give users an irresistible reason to share your content, like offering a reward or hosting a contest or giveaway. Add a CTA to a contest—like “tag a friend in the comments” or “share this post”—and watch your share counts tick up.

Image Source: TikTok

To expand your content’s reach, empower your social media marketing team to work on shares with other teams, including collaborating with content marketers to include easy, visible social share buttons on blog posts. Built-in prompts, like visible share buttons, create direct CTAs and nudges when your audience is already engaged with your content.

This tactic can work in two ways. If you want users to learn more, you can link them to more information and deeper dive content. For example, Convert.com did this by adding direct CTA links in the description box of a YouTube video. These kinds of multi-platform, cross-channel experiences can encourage shares.

6. Engage with influencers and industry leaders

Partnering with an influencer is another way to boost social sharing and supercharge your social media strategy—no matter your budget. It’s also the reason 49% of consumers make purchases once a month.

You don’t need celebrities. Micro-influencers may have smaller followings than celebrities, but leveraging their niche influence can yield a high impact.

Collaborating with industry leaders and influencers is as simple as creating content and tagging each other. Just make sure to follow any agreed-upon terms and stay within copyright rules. If the post is a paid sponsorship, clearly disclose that to users. The two most popular platforms for influencer marketing are:

• Instagram: 57.1% of marketers use the app to partner with influencers.
• TikTok: 51.6% of marketers use the social network to connect with creators.

Image Source: Instagram

Another way to increase shareability is to connect with influencers by regularly engaging with their posts. Connecting helps build relationships that drive organic shares.

7. Encourage UGC and interactive content

UGC and interactive content help with sharing and engagement. Polls and question-based posts that serve as a call-and-response are perfect for sharing and attracting people to a conversation. Users often reshare these posts to show how they voted or get their friends to join in.

Image Source: X

You should also encourage UGC (content people create about a brand). A valuable takeaway from the Content Benchmarks report is that 26% of consumers say UGC is the most engaging content on their feeds. That can look like users posting photos featuring your product or creating Instagram Reels showcasing how they use your service.

Your team can uncover valuable UGC content with tools like Sprout Social Listening. Once the user okays it, you can share their content on your channels.

8. Optimize with social media analytics

To improve shareability, you need to know what works and why. Solutions like Sprout analyze posts and break down why they’re effective. You can streamline reporting, look at your data from different angles and separate paid and organic performance. This helps you to connect what you’re doing to the results you’re seeing.

9. Spot and repurpose the best-performing social content

Repurposing high-performing content is a common content marketing strategy, but it works just as well with social media. Once you spot top-performing posts, repurpose them to get them on more feeds. Try these options:

• Remixing the post after a couple of weeks with new creative assets or a fresh caption
• Repurposing popular short-form video content into a longer YouTube video
• Turning a static image into an Instagram Reel
• Breaking a top-performing carousel into a series of TikTok videos
• Using top comments or common audience questions from your posts to fuel new content ideas

As you reformat content for social, always measure results. It’s a surefire way to know what’s capturing attention and driving engagement. Repurposing content may also help you connect with users who missed your original post on one platform but saw it on another, like reaching a user who missed your post on Instagram but caught it on LinkedIn.

10. Use smarter tools to boost more shares

Social media marketers juggle a massive amount of data, from user behavior and engagement metrics to platform-specific analytics. Without the right tools, you risk missing vital insights that could boost your content’s shareability.

Scalable social media metrics help you spot trends, figure out what resonates and optimize your social media strategies.

That’s where a platform like Sprout comes in.

Analyze social post performance and conversations in one place–no more juggling spreadsheets or switching between tools.

Use performance data to improve your strategy and run A/B tests to find content variations that get the most shares. Improve your strategies based on real audience data—not guesswork.

For example, if UGC gets more shares, analyze your top-performing posts to identify:

• Themes and topics that get more shares
• Post formats like videos or images that drive higher shares
• Best times to post for maximum audience shares

Increase your social media shares with Sprout

Getting more social shares is a near-universal goal and key benchmark among marketers.

Sticking to the tips above can help. Then experiment to see what works best for your audience. Over time, you can develop a content strategy that drives consistent shares and ongoing engagement.

If you want to boost brand awareness, expand your audience and increase sales, start today with Sprout’s 30-day free trial.