Creating content for your social media marketing campaigns is a great way to help your brand thrive on the social Web. Original content that is designed to provide value for the targeted demographic can help boost your presence online, attract more people into your fold, and encourage engagements with the existing followers and customers. And sharing those pieces of content on the social networks can really supercharge your Internet marketing efforts, and provide your brand with positive results.

And to effectively carry out any content marketing strategies on the social Web, it’s become the writers and developers’ responsibility to ensure that their pieces are optimized for sharing. Here are a few tips for making your content more sharable online.

Create Great Content

Image by Howard County Library System

As you may know, content written for any Internet marketing purpose should be engaging, informative, and easy to read.

These qualities are valuable in getting people hooked to your content and that can motivate them to look for what else your brand has to offer and tell their friends all about you and your brand. This generates social mentions across the social networks and builds up your online reputation. And when done effectively, these can compel more people to interact with you and your brand, and convert them into loyal followers and actual clients.

Optimize For the Social Platform

The way you share your content can have diverse effects on how people will gravitate and respond to your pieces. Because of this, it’s important to take note of the different ways every social network and platform can be utilized for your needs. Here, you’ll need to have an understanding of the features and limitations of your intended social media channels.

Twitter, for instance, only allows a limited number of characters per tweet. Because of this, you’re going to have to learn the best ways to trim your messages, include a link to your content, maybe even utilize hashtags, and wrap all these into compact 140-character tweets.

Utilize Photos and Videos

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Adding photos and videos to your content not only attract the eye and help layout your content, but they also enhance the message you’re delivering, help you tell a story, and even prompt people to share it with their friends.

• Make sure that the photos or art you intend to use are yours, or at least the owner has allowed you to use them online. This will spare you from any legal problems in the future.
• Always use good quality images. Your content will have a better chance at getting clicked on and consumed on sites like Tumblr and Pinterest where you’re competing for attention amidst pages and pages of colorful images.
• It’s good to have larger images in case your readers would want to look at them full sized. However, merely resizing them on a Web site can greatly affect page load speeds. For this, you can instead create thumbnails that can direct visitors to their full-sized versions.
• The video is an audio and visual medium. Optimize the audios so you can get your message across, and make sure the visuals are contributing to the good user experience instead of being distractive.

Credit Sources

Image by Sherif Salama

If you used any kind of resources, reference materials, or if you quoted people in your content, never forget to credit them. Aside from it being the right to do from a legal standpoint, attributions can help get your content noticed and even get shared on the social networks. In most cases, these sources are influencers in their respective industries, and being affiliated with them trough your content can be great for your brand’s own reputation.

The sources, perhaps in their own Internet marketing efforts, will be motivated to share your content among their own followers. Naturally, the people who follow these reputable sources will be compelled to visit your site or blog, increase site traffic and engagement opportunities in the process, and even further share your content to their own social spheres.

Tags: Blogging, Content Creations, Content Distribution, social media marketing, social network