Social media can help with brand awareness, brand recognition and sales and improve your relationship with customers. A good social media content plan will get you more followers and reach more people. When used right, social media can take your brand to the next level by reaching customers where they spend their time online.
Best content is based on a solid social media strategy, one that aligns with your business goals and makes sense for your brand, niche and industry. Worth knowing how to create content for social media that sticks.
Social media content should be included in your branding and marketing strategy because it’s a cost-effective marketing tool that allows small businesses to compete with large corporations and form long-lasting relationships with customers. Social media allows your brand to showcase its unique personality, but your followers still expect quality content that’s engaging and can inform and educate them about your industry, brand, and products.
Contents
Social media content creation is the act of creating written content, photography, videos or graphics for social media platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, X and more).
Social media can drive traffic to your website and it’s a sales tool. The more you are visible online the more opportunities you have to convert visitors into customers. Every post you create is an opportunity to advertise your business but your content plan should have a mix of promotional and educational or engaging posts that will attract more customers.
With all the types of social media content available, it can be hard to know which one is best suited for your brand. The best and most straightforward way to find out is to experiment.
Developing a social media content plan can help you save time and make posting on social media more efficient. Here’s how you can get started creating a social media content plan.
Learn about your audience
Know your audience and you will know what types of posts will work and which social media platforms to use. Not all businesses will be on all platforms.
Dig deeper and get market insights and competitive data. This will give you insights on what people want to see on social media, why your audience is engaging with your brand and what type of posts your target audience wants to see.
To produce good social media content you need to do some serious research on target audience needs through surveys, customer interviews and community listening.
Develop a content creation plan
You don’t have enough content to post daily so you need a content creation plan where you can spend quality time creating social media content. You don’t have to be a designer to create beautiful posts. Use a content creation tool to create unique content without hiring a designer. Set aside time every month to create content for the next month so you’ll always have content ready when you need it.
You can also use content your followers and customers create for you. User-generated content (UGC) is where you ask your followers and customers to send you photos and videos of them using the products. Of course some will do this for free but you may have to incentivize customers to send you photos and videos by offering them discounts on products.
Researching your audience isn’t enough to create truly unique content for your audience. To take your digital content creation to the next level you need to find content gaps your brand can fill.
You probably have some content already developed for marketing. Grab all your content and see what you can reuse for social media. For example if you have a blog on your website, what types of blogs can you post on social media to drive web traffic and brand awareness. You can repurpose different types of content by making new content out of them.
Start by comparing social media accounts yours and your competitor’s side by side, look at the data and understand why your competitors are doing better.
Study your analytics
Looking at your post’s analytics will give you insights into views, likes, comments, shares and follower growth. These are indicators of content and audience engagement. You can’t change past posts but you can use these analytics to inform future content. By looking at what works in successful posts you can refine your content, topics, formats and styles that work best with your audience. This is an iterative process that will help you get higher engagement and impact across all your social media channels.
Also you can refine your targeting and timing strategy. By looking at when and who your content resonates with you can schedule and segment your audience for future posts. This data driven approach will help you reach your target audience at the right time and overall improve your social media marketing. Ultimately using analytics will let you iterate and evolve your content strategy and get sustained engagement and growth on your social media.
Embrace the power of video
We are clearly in the video era. TikToks, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels are getting tons of engagement and for good reason. So developing a video marketing strategy should be a no brainer.
With smartphone cameras, it has never been easier to hit a record. Facebook’s algorithm loves it and it’s a great way to show off your stuff. Plus with livestreaming going mainstream, consumer expectations for social video have shifted. Videos that feel rougher around the edges can feel more native to social platforms.
Create a content calendar
Having a content calendar will save you time. If you post daily on social media consider using a social media management tool that allows you to schedule posts across all your platforms from one place. These tools will allow you to track your posts and analyse different aspects of your marketing in real time.
Ideally you would have a calendar per platform but if you do a lot of cross posting and content recycling then it makes sense to have everything in one place.
To automate this process further, you can also use a social media management tool that will also help with scheduling content and even provide additional features such as analytics and reporting.
Final thoughts
As a social media marketer one of the most basic tasks you get is creating content for social media. It is not always easy to do it over and over but luckily there are many resources you can Contact FOR® to make your job easier and get better results.
To make your brand stand out, save time and improve customer experience, use each social media platform to combine these different types of content. Over time you’ll learn what types of content work best for your audience. You’ll never know what works until you try.
