When it comes to building your business, social media marketing is crucial. It may not be the powerhouse in conversion rates, but it’s a true powerhouse in branding a business. Nothing helps a company brand like a great viral media campaign, and your content can’t go viral without your customer’s participation. Fortunately, it’s possible to build your brand’s message in such a way that visitors will want to share it, and part of the key to unlocking this opportunity is understanding why people act the way they do on social media.

Simply stated, people love to talk about themselves. Scientific American discovered that people talk about themselves about 80 percent of the time on social media. It even feels like the other 20 percent of the time we’re posting other content because it makes us look smart, or it makes us look funny. Occasionally people post because they do care about others. Our generation isn’t that narcissistic (well kind of). Bottom Line is we’re all guilty of using our Facebook or Twitter page to boast or make ourselves look good, so take advantage of this fact. Market to the selfish, it will work if you do it right.

Here are a few tips for getting people to share your brand while they’re busy talking about themselves:

1. Apps for people to share their good habits.

People love the opportunity to show off when they’re doing something right. A combination of personal accountability and self-congratulation has made diet and exercise apps hugely popular. Walking a mile or eating a healthy dinner doesn’t feel like as much of an achievement if nobody else knows about it.

All sorts of apps today fit this criteria. Some of the most popular are running apps, which let users share their routes and times, or dieting apps, which let users share the good news when they come in under their daily calorie goals. People love to share how many miles they ran, and it’s now becoming more prevalent on instagram.

Other apps are more creative. For a great example, take a look at PXScanner by Pharmanex, a device that allows people to determine their antioxidant levels and share them with others. People are now sharing what’s in their blood because of this technology.

If you can develop a product or service that makes people feel good about themselves, incorporating an app to enable them to share their accomplishments is like free publicity. Health apps have capitalized on this. Be sure to study how they do this.

2. Allowing people to share what they’ve purchased.

People love to use their social media profiles as a way to share what they’re doing, often giving up-to-the-minute updates about their daily lives to friends and families. When they’re doing something exciting, like making a long-awaited purchase, they’re even more likely to share in their excitement.

Aside from being naturally inclined to boast about our newest acquisitions, people are by and large also very curious about what others are up to and eager to one-up them. If your customer shares that he just bought an exciting product from your site, it will attract the attention of the next potential buyer or at least start a discussion about the product.

This strategy works for all sorts of businesses, from pizza delivery joints to tax preparation services. If you’re offering something for sale, make it possible for customers to tell the world they’ve just bought it!

3. Branding hash tags to foster community.

Part of the excitement of attending an event is the feeling that you’re part of a community. When you post a selfie at the baseball stadium or update your status from the convention center, what you’re really saying is, “I’m part of something!”

Help foster that sense of community — and give visitors some direction — by branding a hash tag for your events. Having a pithy hash tag already created for your event gives your customers something to rally behind and share. Soon everyone will be talking on on that hash tag, creating a big buzz that will draw lots of attention from curious virtual passers-by.

These are just three great ways to make people’s boasting do wonders for your business. As you start to pay attention to what people in your audience spend their time posting about, you’ll no doubt uncover even more opportunities to make your message shine.

4. Stimulate Excitement

The best marketers in the world figure out how to create and push excitement around their product. If you’re creating excitement around your product people will share if they buy it. With them buying it, it shows they gave into the excitement. Discounts can create excitement. Holiday discounts like for Black Friday create excitement. Brand new product releases create excitement, even companies like Apple know that. The excitement will stimulate buzz which will stimulate shares, which will stimulate sells.