One of the most fun and frustrating things to do working in social media is coming up with content strategies. Developing a great strategy is the opportunity to present a brand in a way that is informative, entertaining and useful. Some people create and post content on the fly; however I highly recommend that you think strategically when trying to create content that will resonate with your audience. As marketers we are competing with friends, family and other marketers for real estate in news feeds, so we have to come up with quality content. Creating a strategy can be difficult at times, so here are 5 things to think about.
1. Who are you trying to reach?
The first step to creating any social media content strategy is knowing your who you are trying to reach. Knowing information about age, gender, location and even interests used to build the community will give you a great starting point when it comes to creating awesome content. At the end of the day, we have to give the people what they want to keep their attention. News feeds are ruthless battlegrounds, so you have to arm yourself with as much demographic knowledge as possible to be competitive.
2. What do they care about?
Once you know who your audience is, you have to know what engages them. What makes them respond or take action? What do they truly like or find interesting? Don’t make the mistake of creating only meme-tastic content; your goal should be to take the immediate interest that they have expressed by connecting with your page and extrapolate all of the other possible interests they might have. THIS is where you will come up with the complexity in your content strategy. A complex and dynamic approach to content will make your communities stick around. Another important point here is to try to have a relevant image with every content piece. 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and that we process visuals 60,000x faster than regular text. On Facebook, 74% of the posts are comprised of photo content and they nab roughly 95% of total brand engagement. Find out what they care about, make it pretty to look at.
3. How often will you post?
A recent study showed that 60% of big brands surveyed posted at least once per day. Should you follow suit or only post when you have something to say? Having a content calendar will help you know when and how often you should post. I recommend starting off around 3 posts per week and increasing as you see fit. In the same study, some brands posted a few times per day and saw consistently high engagement rates. This might be a good route to go if you have a lot to communicate with your audience about. Posting consistency is all about testing and LISTENING to your audience. Keep an eye on your Unlikes for an indication of when you might be posting a little too much. If you see a consistent rise in Unlikes, it’s time to reconsider your strategy.
4. Are you using ALL of your brand assets?
This is one of the biggest mistakes that I see up and coming brands make. Leaving valuable brand assets on the table robs you of a ton of great possible engagement points. Think of it like this, if there is something remotely interesting on your website, it should be up for discussion for use on social. Many times, your own website is a great starting point for content ideas. In an age of memes and cat pictures, we often overlook great content in our own backyards. Keep in mind, you might need to tweak things a bit, however always try to use everything available to your before looking externally for content. Always make the most of what you have!
5. Don’t forget the lurkers!
Ted Rubin is someone that I admire very much in the industry and he recently discussed the value of “lurkers” in social media. Essentially, these people are those that connect with your page and digest content, however they never engage. Just because people don’t engage doesn’t mean that they won’t click through to your website to buy. We all like to rate our social campaigns based on engagement and fan growth, however I would argue that we should also measure traffic to your website to keep tabs on those lurkers. You can do this per post if you want to get really granular with your data. If a post doesn’t get engagement but generates clicks to your site, is it bad content? Of course to do this, every post would need a shortened link or custom URL. In the end, lurkers are members of your community too!
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