What exactly is a social network? Think about the question before you answer it. The obvious and easy answer is just to say “YouTube, Facebook, Twitter.” But it goes beyond this. I think that what differentiates a social media website from any other website is the presence of sharing. Of course, user-generated, non-professional content is also a key part of the mix, but the fundamental idea behind the whole drive is sharing.

People put videos on YouTube because they want to share them with the world. People tweet because they want to share those 140 characters with their followers. People update their Facebook because they want their friends to know… exactly whatever it is people are updating Facebook status with these days.

The important part; however, is sharing. And just as important is the re-sharing and the crossover sharing. When someone reads a great story on Facebook, they have the option to re-post it so that their friends can see it, or they might even hop on Twitter and Tweet about it. Or perhaps they’ll find a great video on YouTube, and then post it onto a friend’s Wall, so that that friend, and everyone in his news feed are also exposed to the video.

It’s easy to see how things go viral this way. The question is, how to you use this phenomenon to make your posts go viral. The key is inciting in your followers an urgent want to share your postings.

So make things relevant to your customers. Social media constantly gives us new tools which allow us to break down users preferences and segregate them into disparate groups. You have more information about your customers than ever before. So speak to them only with ideas that are relevant to them, and that they will act upon and re-share.

Beyond making things relevant, make it easier for your customers to share your posts and videos. Integrate all your social media with sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, at least. Social media mavens have mixed opinions about this, but I like to think about it this way.

Whenever you post a video or an article, there are going to be three camps of people. The first camp will absolutely love your post, and want to scream it from the top of a mountain. They will re-share it whether you have a button or not. The second camp will hopefully like the post, but decide for whatever reason that they do not want to re-share it, even if there is a post.

In the third camp are the undecideds. Some of them may really like the video, but maybe not quite enough to click over to Facebook and think of some clever caption to write with your video. If there is a share button there though, I can all but guarantee this will sway at least some of them. People are inherently lazy, and people like anything that makes there life easier. The share buttons do. So add them.

Of course, the most effective way to do this is by putting yourself in your customer’s position. Before you post anything via social media, make an honest attempt to look at it at from your readers/customers/followers positions, and ask yourself two questions: “How does this help me?” And “Would I want to re-share this?”