What is Sh**posting?

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Let me start with a warning: pursue this strategy at your risk.

Sh**posting isn't for the faint of heart.

But for true internet content insiders, great sh**posting is like being a brilliant 'alternative comedian'. It's even better because it's only for insiders.

So what is 'sh**posting'?

In short, it's creating content that's purposefully abstract, meaningless, of extremely poor quality, or, in some cases, ironic to the point of trolling.

It's almost like you're making fun of internet content by posting internet content.

But I feel like explaining sh**posting doesn't do it justice. You have to see it.

Nutter Butter leaned in hard to sh**posting on TikTok

Everything is Terrible is a longtime found footage brand that revels in cringey sh**posts:

Original sh**posts were mostly memes on Reddit or 4chan, but a special flavor of meme that's less clever...or maybe more clever...it's hard to tell:

So what's the strategy to grow 1% using sh**posts?

If you can win over sh**posting audiences, you have won the true internet addicts.

And I've won them over in three ways. I'll list them by increasing difficulty:

1. Sh**post Curation: Many top meme accounts grew by finding sh**posts on Reddit, then uploading them to their own account. I do not condone freebooting. However, there are ways to do this ethically. For example, retweeting while writing additional context, embedding sh**posts in your newsletter (like I did!), or even building relationships with meme creators. Many brands skewing towards Gen Z will use this tactic.
2. Topper Comments: When you see a sh**post, playing along can get you a lot of attention. When responding to a sh**post, you will never get your flowers saying, "This is weird." You have to top the joke by relating to it personally, telling another joke based on the context, or building out the 'world' of the joke. The 'game' of sh**posts plays out in the comments, as the joy is in the reaction.

3. Build Your Brand Around Sh**posting: Like the Nutter Butter example above, or even most Duolingo content, reveling in weirdness can become a sign that you 'get' this generation. This takes a lot of creativity. Luckily, many 23-year-old internet addicts seem to have an inherent ability to sh**post at PhD levels. This has the added benefit of being able to have endless wells of content, as sh**posts are defined by their randomness, and the world can't run out of randomness.

My mission for you: you don't have to change your brand to a sh**posting brand.

In fact, if your content isn't for Gen Z, I would stay far away from all of this.

But if it is, just spend some time today searching meme pages and thinking about why they work.

Does the content require deep internet knowledge? Is there a style that seems to work? What artistic choices are common within this content?

Once you fully understand why sh**post content resonates, you can decide how you can integrate the style into your strategy.

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About the Author

Phil Ranta, is the COO of Fixated, a content and gaming studio building IP around creators, a LinkedIn Top Voice in Innovation & Tech, and has been creating content for the internet and building internet businesses professionally for nearly 20 years, starting on MySpace and riding trends to the present. He was the Head of Gaming Creators, North America at Facebook, the first network lead at Fullscreen, the COO at Studio71, and spent 10 years as a working comedian (including 2 years on cruise ships). He's a husband, a dad of two littles, and an insufferable digital media wonk.

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