When you come across a story about your town, city, or state, what makes you want to share it?

That’s a question we’ve been asking here at NPR Digital Services. There are hints about what causes sharing — we know emotion and positivity play roles. We know the headline can make or break a story’s potential. But we want to know specifically about local content. What is it about certain local stories that make them more social than others?

To answer this, we conducted a study to define what types of local content cause the most sharing and engagement.

Background

Earlier this year we told you about an experiment where we geotargeted local content on the NPR Facebook page. In that experiment, we posted stories created by Seattle member station KPLU. We geotargeted that content so that only people in Seattle could see it on their Facebook News Feeds.

We measured success using this metric: Of the unique people who see each post, what percentage like it, share it, or comment on it? We found that the geotargeted posts were six times more successful than posts that were shared to the global NPR Facebook following.

The experiment helped KPLU earn record site traffic and confirmed that the NPR Facebook following is eager to engage with and share local content.

In July, we expanded our project. We are now geotargeting content from five member stations in five different regions — KQED in San Francisco, KUT in Austin, WBUR in Boston, KPCC in Southern California, and still KPLU in Seattle.

Since expanding, we’ve found continued (and often greater) success from all five stations. Geotargeted stories continue to register a high success rate and gain an average of 223 combined likes, shares, and comments per post.

But early on in the project, we noticed something that’s probably familiar to any news organization with a Facebook page — certain stories took off, accumulating hundreds of shares, likes, and comments on Facebook and jolting the Chartbeat meter. Other stories fell flat.

So rather than geotargeting just any news story that a station creates, we are selective and calculated with the types of local stories we post. Content must have compelling headlines. It must be locally relevant and meaningful. And locals should be likely to share it, like it, and comment on it. The editors with whom we’re working closely with at KPLU, KQED, KUT, WBUR, and KPCC are terrific at identifying and creating content that meets these standards.

But…what does that actually look like? What types of content will locals be more likely to engage with on Facebook?

That brings us to our study, which aims to answer those questions and pinpoint the kinds of content that locals are compelled to share, like and comment on.

We looked at every story we geotargeted during the months of July, August, and September 2012, focusing on the ones that the localized NPR Facebook following liked, shared, and commented on at a high rate. From this group of successful stories, we identified similarities which allowed us to create nine distinct content categories. We then dissected each successful story to decide which category it fell into.

To identify a story’s category, we asked a series of questions. Why did people share this story? What reaction did people have when they shared it? What is the story actually delivering to people — an explanation, a video, a hard news story?

We repeated this exercise several times for each piece of content until we were confident placing it into a category.

Before we get to the results, we should point out a few things. First, we aren’t implying that the nine types of content below are the only kinds of content that exist or matter. Rather, we’re articulating data-backed trends we discovered in an analysis of content geotargeted to four cities (KPCC joined the project after the measurement period) over a span of three months. Finally, as you look at examples, you might notice that there is overlap. Some stories fit into multiple categories. We placed stories into categories based on their primary defining characteristics.

Here are the 9 types of local stories that cause engagement:

UPDATE: See an infographic showcasing all 9 types →

Place Explainers

Every city has traits, quirks, and habits that are begging to be dissected. These characteristics are well known to locals, but no one ever stops to explain why they even exist in the first place. Place Explainers investigate, answer, and explain these questions. In our project, KPLU tipped us off to this content type with its I Wonder Why…? series, which explores the “endearing, odd, even irritating” attributes of the Pacific Northwest. For example, why does Seattle have so few kids and so many dogs? A story by KQED pointed out the 26 signs you’re in Silicon Valley and a KUT piece listed what draws people to Austin and what drives them away.

Crowd Pleasers

We all love to brag every once in awhile about the area we call home. Crowd Pleasers zero in on that feeling of pride. These stories provide an opportunity to celebrate everything from beautiful weather in the Pacific Northwest to the athletic prowess of California athletes who won 93 Olympic gold medals. When Austin was ranked by Bloomberg Businessweek as the eighth-best city in the country, Austinites cheered on Facebook with comments such as “Yaaay!! GO Austin!” and “Whether Austin ranks 1st or 100th, I still love living here :)” That’s exactly the type of reaction you’ll get from Crowd Pleasers.

Curiosity Stimulators

You know those stories you come across that you can’t turn down? The ones that have you hooked at the headline? Curiosity Stimulators get that a lot. It’s the type of story that captures a geeky and quirky side of a city. And after people click through and read a Curiosity Stimulator, they often feel compelled to share it because they get the sensation of stumbling upon a local gem. The Curiosity Stimulator is a 4,000-pound spider-robot named Stompy. It’s a woman who married a corporation. It’s the discovery of a hidden video game city.

News Explainers

Event-based stories chronicle the news of a city. This bill was passed. This person was hired. That person was fired. News Explainers make sense of the news. Rather than just telling you what happened, News Explainers dissect why or how it happened. For example, here’s what people in Washington should consider before possessing legal marijuana. Now that Austin has declared support for same-sex marriage, here’s what happens next. Here’s why it’s been unusually chilly in San Francisco. Leading up to the 2012 election, ballot question guides such as this one by KQED were perfect examples of News Explainers. They took complex local topics and made sense of them for people.

Major Breaking News

Cities are saturated with everyday news stories such as traffic jams and fires. But Major Breaking News has a much bigger impact on a city or a region. Massive storms are an easy example of this because they tend to make life difficult for entire regions. But Major Breaking News doesn’t happen often — a few examples from this project include the coffeeshop shooting in Seattle, Hurricane Sandy, and the approval of legal recreational marijuana and same-sex marriage in Washington.

Feel-Good Smilers

Think “awww,” think “awesome,” think “hilarious.” Most of all, think positive: this category is made up of happy stories. A Feel-Good Smiler is a 10-year-old girl who convinced Jamba Juice to stop using foam cups. It’s the birth of an animal that locals love (Seattleites, apparently, are obsessed with orcas). It’s a nighttime Austin marriage proposal that found its way to Reddit. And is there anything more feel-good than warm cookies delivered by bicycle to your door? Humor, which tends to make people feel good, also plays a role in Feel-Good Smiler content. Cue Seattle’s Colonel Meow.

Topical Buzzers

A Topical Buzzer is the story of the moment that everyone’s talking about locally. When the Space Shuttle Endeavor flies overhead, a Topical Buzzer shows you photos of it. When the mayor of Boston writes an epic memo to Chick-fil-A, a Topical Buzzer tells you about it. When Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis serve coffee at a local cafe (and mobs of locals pack the streets to catch a glimpse), a Topical Buzzer rides the viral coattails of the story. The key to deploying a Topical Buzzer on your site: knowing when something is beginning to buzz.

Provocative Controversies

Have you ever come across a story about your city and you could feel your blood beginning to boil? That’s usually what happens when people encounter a Provocative Controversy — they get ticked off and highly opinionated. In Washington, when state officials killed a pack of wolves, locals had a lot to say about it. KQED’s story about the California State Parks Department sitting on a $54 million surplus for 12 years has dozens of comments. In Boston, a story about a doctor refusing obese patients elicited Facebook comments such as “SOOOO ANGRY !!!!” and “Shame on them.”

Awe-Inspiring Visuals

“Whoa…” You know that feeling? It’s the feeling you get when you see a killer whale catching air in Puget Sound. When you’re spooked by the images of a 75-year-old L.A. hotel wing. When you look into the cold dark eyes of sharks swimming in Cape Cod. When you’re haunted by a people-less time-lapse of Seattle. We already know people like to gaze at beautiful images. People love to goggle at beautiful images of their city. Awe-Inspiring Visuals capture that wonderment through photos and videos.

Graphic by Russ Gossett. Cross-posted from the NPR Digital Services blog.