This week social media surprised me. A post of mine in Facebook went viral and received almost thousands of views and comments across Facebook and Whatsapp groups, as well as some direct action taken as a result of my message, a few police reports followed. See here.
The FB post was trying to achieve a very specific goal – to find out if there is any the truth about and ongoing rumour in Kota Kinabalu that a cop was beaten up by a Senior Minister from the Party Warisan Sabah Government. The Senior Minister has a bad reputation and a history of beating up people. What I heard could not be dismissed as rumours because of the Senior Minister’s reputation where even his own sister had in the past lodged a report that he threatened her with a pistol, it was reported in the newspapers. Just like the Lido Kapitan Cina Case – alleged assault of the 62-year-old man at the Lido commercial area.
I resolved to find out if the rumour was true. Not allegation but only questioning if there is any truth in the story, nothing wrong. My next step was Facebook.
I learnt that one way to get your content to “move” (ie. be seen, heard and shared widely), is to be more human.
Well, this theory proved true when the Facebook post I wrote, went viral, a breakthrough for me at last! And it only took me 20 minutes to write the post.
Here’s the story and I want to share it with you as an example of how to write content that moves, so you can put this theory to the test as well.
I wrote the post about my concerns when I heard that a Senior Minister from Party Warisan had beaten up a cop. I was honest and raw, and guess what?
The post (you can read it here) was shared no less than 270 times on social media. It was viewed by more than 2120 people at last count, attracted several comments and incited hot debate both on Whatsapp and on Facebook where the post also attracted increased engagement and comments.
Why This FB Post Attracted High Engagement?
I’ve been writing posts for a long time now, and some fare better than others in terms of engagement, but usually I spend hours carefully crafting each post. This one? 20 minutes!
While I didn’t deliberately set out to be controversial, but I did take a deep breath when I hit Post, because I realized I had exposed something about a Senior Minister a Politician and that was risky. People might judge me harshly… and a couple of people did. And then, three police reports were made against me.
You know what though? Many, many more people wrote to me, both on and off social media, to say how much they support me.
So what made this post move?
- It was human. I showed my take on an issue, warts and all. The reason I wrote the post was because of a genuine concerned for the image of the police and that it should be protected.
- I told a story. People love and relate to real life stories.
- I didn’t water it down. I ignored that little voice in my head that said: “You can’t Post that!” I simply said what a lot of other people were thinking.
How can you create content that moves? Be brave, don’t shy away from controversy and be prepared to answer your critics…they will come. Perhaps that’s why it was discovered that over the years, 25 plus police reports made against this Senior Minister for assault and threatening with a pistol was withdrawn.
Below is the FB post which got me into trouble…..
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