Whether you are new to the world of content creation or are an established entity in the business, there is always more to learn about how to maximize performance. As the nature of the internet becomes one with more connectivity and community, you’ll want to be sure that you are focusing on incorporating these two elements into any and all strategies. Many people are wondering how they can better improve engagement rates on their content – both on and off social media. One simple way to do so is to bolster the tendency of people to share the content, which is good for increasing views, conversions, purchases and visibility. Below, we’ll talk about how you can add more of a social factor to your existing and future content so that you’ll reap all of these benefits.

Always be Compelling

One common element that encourages people to share what they’ve read is emotion and a compelling story. Something that brings a tear to one’s eye or excites them about a cause is bound to be shared over and over again. This means a huge return on your “investment” (in most cases, this will be time) through email shares, social shares and inevitably, better search engine rankings. By pinging URLs that contain content that is both desirable, poignant and compelling, your readers will have no choice but to share it with others.

Be Clean

In most cases, content that shares well and broadly needs to be as clean as possible. While some niche content can thrive with a bit of profanity laced in and about it, most content will not go far in such a setting. If you want people to share your content through email, private messages and on social media networks, then be sure to clean up the language and find ways to express colourful opinions in less controversial ways. Once you’ve done this, your content will be appropriate for all audiences and have a greater chance of spreading.

Keep Content Manageable

Most popular forms of content that do well on social media have one thing in common: they’re readable! If you cannot manage to get through a piece of content in a couple of minutes, then its social factor is heavily diminished. When you’re pinging URLs with more than 1,000 words of content, then the likelihood of someone reading it – let alone recommending it – will be quite small. Those who are publishing content on a regular basis will be well advised to keep content shorter and if necessary, break up long analyses into multiple portions and release them one at a time. This will keep people coming back to read more and will not overwhelm them from the get-go.

Use Multimedia

Without the use of multimedia, you won’t create content that goes very far. People want to see videos and photo that reinforce the narrative and make the content easier to digest. In addition, when you are sharing the content yourself through social media, make sure that it is accompanied by imagery that will make people want to engage with it; otherwise you’ll be pinging URLs that don’t spread very far.