As a strategy to make brands more visible, creating content for social media marketing has become one of today’s online essentials.
Social media marketing has changed the way marketing should be done. According to the GoDaddy 2020 Global Entrepreneurship Survey, 51% of Filipino small business owners depend on social media to market their products and services. To increase your brand’s visibility, creating content for social media marketing is an excellent—and vital—strategy.
In this article, let’s talk about the many ways you can produce engaging social media content for your audience’s consumption.
What Are The Types of Social Media Content You Can Use?
In today’s digital landscape, content is king. Gazillions of content pop up on your feed every day, but let’s be real: Only a few stand out. Build your brand and audience share by making these content:
Blog posts
Post on: Company websites, Facebook, and LinkedIn
Blog posts and articles provide information about your products and services. A study shows that posting 24 to more than 50 blog posts per month brings about 30% to 77% of traffic to websites. Start by publishing at least 10 to 15 a month and slowly add more.
Static images
Post on: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
Any suitable image you use will surely bring more engagement to your post. According to Jeff Bullas, a social media strategist, Facebook posts with photos bring 37% more engagement. Besides, your attention falls on pictures first before reading the actual post.
Videos
Post on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
A short-form video quickly captures your attention with its digestible nature. If you can compress your ideas into a 60-second video, you have a high chance of getting noticed. Brand association on your business increases by 139% after users watch a video. Not only that, but videos tell your brand’s story more effectively than any other medium.
Infographics
Post on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn
Infographics give users something visually-pleasing while taking in new information. Using infographics allows you to repurpose your content and make it fresh for the audience. From data to facts, infographics help in educating the masses about relevant topics and issues today.
6 Steps to Come Up with Winning Content for Social Media Marketing
Anyone who thinks that creating content for social media marketing is easy needs to step out of their bubble. Content takes time and energy. Content creators require a full production time before an idea becomes a full-blown social media sensation.
Send netizens into a frenzy on your next marketing stunt with these tips:
1. Learn about your target audience.
Creating content for social media begins with getting to know your audience. Find out the age, gender, educational level, interests, and other information about your target consumers. This data will guide you in making decisions in tailoring your content later on.
2. Brainstorm and pitch ideas.
Have a sit-down session with your team and come up with an idea for your content. No matter how silly, ridiculous, or impossible an idea may seem, that could be the next big hit.
Take some inspiration from public holidays, memes, history, life’s realities, and pop culture to make relevant content. All references aside, you can never go wrong with taking a more emotional route in your content. Tugging the heartstrings has always been effective in getting any message across.
3. Look back on past social media content.
Backtracking and evaluating all your previous social media content won’t hurt. Take note of the ones that performed well and those that didn’t. Some of the previous methods you used before could still work this time around. Ditch the techniques that won’t do anything good to your content.
4. Analyze the competition.
Go over the social media profiles of your competitors to see what makes their content work. Determine their strengths and weaknesses. Read online reviews from their customers. From this data, think of new ways to make your new content fresh and relevant.
5. Keep voice and branding on point.
Stick to a voice that your brand uses when making content. Puns and humor work but only to a certain extent. Create a unique way of writing copy and curating content to make your branding stand out among the rest. The image and perception you make for your business will make you recognizable for the long haul.
6. Get the audience involved.
Marketing becomes more effective when the audience can take part in it. Create polls and surveys about your product. Have giveaway promos and discounts for a week. Launch dance challenges to make your jingle memorable. Anything that gets the audience moving will put your brand on the map.
How to Properly Manage Your Content for Social Media Marketing
Digital marketing doesn’t end with just making content. What comes next is social media content management. Save time by managing the content put out on social media with these tips:
1. Schedule your content.
You should establish a regular schedule for your content posting. Decide how often you want to post on social media, and set a particular day and time frame. Usually, it’s ideal to post content at least once a day if you have the capacity to do so. Otherwise, three times a week can also work well.
To help with housekeeping, create and maintain a content calendar to ensure proper post scheduling across all platforms. Format it in a way that easily filters the content according to the specific social media channels and content types you’re going to post.
2. If all else fails, you can rely on evergreen content.
Producing evergreen content is a must for a reason. While it’s important to stay on top of current events to stay relevant (for example, relating your brand to upcoming holidays or national celebrations), it’s also important that you reserve slots for content that isn’t time-bound. Doing so will help you ideate topics that aren’t dependent on trending topics.
Evergreen content is also easier to repurpose since the insights it provides are usable all year round.
3. Remember that there’s no one ideal time to post, so find what works for you.
Right timing is the key to getting the most engagement when you post on social media. When talking about the ideal time to post on specific social media platforms, different marketing research platforms also offer different insights regarding specific posting schedules.
For example, HubSpot suggests that brands post on Facebook every Thursday and Friday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Meanwhile, TrackMaven claims that the best time to post on Facebook is on Thursday at exactly 8 p.m.
What we’ll suggest is for you to run your own A/B testing on the posting schedule that works specifically for your own audience.
4. Monitor the results of your content for social media marketing.
It’s easy to take the number of likes and shares at face value. The higher the number, the better, right? It doesn’t always work that way. A low number of likes and shares doesn’t necessarily mean that your campaigns are failing. Vanity metrics only go so far, after all.
If available on the social media platform you use, refer to your analytics dashboard to counter-check if your content is doing numbers. If you’re falling behind, update your strategies next time and explore beyond your usual marketing techniques.
Let the Right Team Create Your Content for Social Media Marketing
Creating content for social media needs time, hard work, teamwork, and patience. It’s a shot in the dark, but all the work pays off when good results come in. If you’re feeling uninspired to ideate your own content or do not have the luxury of time to build an effective social media marketing campaign, you can rely on experts to do the job for you.
Eight Media can strategize content for social media marketing that guarantees ample engagement. We also offer other digital marketing services that can help make your brand recognizable to your target market and empower your business. Get in touch with us today!