Let’s suppose you have created social media profiles for your brand. You've probably got your friends and family to like your pages and generate a buzz about your brand. At this point of your marketing journey, you're actively looking out for new followers to increase your fanbase and are investing in paid advertising with a fixed budget in mind.
But is that it?
How do you actually ensure that those fan numbers keep increasing gradually?
How do you make your social media pages interactive?
How do you make your fans talk about you?
What makes your brand stand out from the others?
Where can you find resources to create content for your followers?
How can you ensure that your content is fresh, engaging, interactive, crisp, informative, helpful and suited for your target audience?
With multiple questions like these springing up as you start your digital marketing journey, it’s natural to feel lost and confused.
Fortunately, we’re here to guide you along the path of excellent content creation - the kind of content that makes your fans want to keep their eyes hooked on to your page for every update.
We’re are uncovering the secrets of content creation that will help grow your business and add value to your product and services.
1) Understand the objective of Social Media:
The first step in creating engaging content is to understand what social media is all about. The word “social” means “relating” to humans, individuals, people, society, and communities. It’s the type of media that’s used to communicate with your target audience, customers, fans, and followers. The content you create should be focused on them - their needs, their interests, their aspirations, their problems and answers to their questions.
Social media marketing is like creating a digital personality for your brand and using it to interact with online communities.
Social media marketing is like creating a digital personality for your brand and using it to interact with online communities.
Do you want to be seen as a boring and out-of-date brand? If your answer is “no”, then read along.
2) Add value to your audience:
Before you post anything online, ask yourself one question - Am I adding value to my audience?
The bulk of what you post MUST add value to your audience. If you’re not adding value then you’re simply posting for the sake of posting. Try to come up with ideas for creatives, guides, freebies, blog posts and white papers that will help them with something related to the product/service that you offer.
You are trying to build a relationship with your followers, and one of the best ways to do this is to give away useful, valuable and much-needed information. Your relationship with your target audience strengthens when they see you as a trustworthy and authoritative resource that understands their problems and is always out there for them. Engage with your audience and tailor-make content around their needs and lifestyle.
If you aggressively post about yourself, you’re neglecting them passively and ultimately losing their attention.
2) Add value to your audience:
Before you post anything online, ask yourself one question - Am I adding value to my audience?
The bulk of what you post MUST add value to your audience. If you’re not adding value then you’re simply posting for the sake of posting. Try to come up with ideas for creatives, guides, freebies, blog posts and white papers that will help them with something related to the product/service that you offer.
You are trying to build a relationship with your followers, and one of the best ways to do this is to give away useful, valuable and much-needed information. Your relationship with your target audience strengthens when they see you as a trustworthy and authoritative resource that understands their problems and is always out there for them. Engage with your audience and tailor-make content around their needs and lifestyle.
If you aggressively post about yourself, you’re neglecting them passively and ultimately losing their attention.
3) Strictly limit promotional and sales messages:
In its purest sense, social media isn’t a direct sales platform - It’s an engagement and interactive platform.
Keeping that in mind, try to limit promotional messages that clutter your page, thus making it very sales-oriented. Your audience might be aware of the products and services you’ve got to offer - but that doesn’t mean that you push your sales messages into their face expecting them to make purchases.
Instead, follow the 80-20 rule, where 80 percent of your content should be focused on your audience and how to add value to them, while only 20 percent (or even less) should be an occasional product/service message with the sole purpose of highlighting how your offerings help fulfil the need of your customers.
Just to reiterate, The "SELL, SELL, SELL" approach does not work! Too many sales messages tend to make your pages look boring and unattractive. Give your audience what they want, and where they want it.
"Don't give them what you want them to want."
4) Research to find trending topics:
Keeping that in mind, try to limit promotional messages that clutter your page, thus making it very sales-oriented. Your audience might be aware of the products and services you’ve got to offer - but that doesn’t mean that you push your sales messages into their face expecting them to make purchases.
Instead, follow the 80-20 rule, where 80 percent of your content should be focused on your audience and how to add value to them, while only 20 percent (or even less) should be an occasional product/service message with the sole purpose of highlighting how your offerings help fulfil the need of your customers.
Just to reiterate, The "SELL, SELL, SELL" approach does not work! Too many sales messages tend to make your pages look boring and unattractive. Give your audience what they want, and where they want it.
"Don't give them what you want them to want."
4) Research to find trending topics:
Never get left behind in the world of content creation. As the phrase goes, “you snooze, you lose”.
Always be on the lookout for the freshest and trending topics on the internet. Consider yourself as one of the suppliers of reliable content for your audience - would you want to take chances by omitting research out of your content creation strategy?
Topic and keyword research is important because you cannot assume what your audience wants. Find out the questions your audience is asking, their struggles, their problem areas, their doubts, their insincerities towards your product and so on.
What can you do to help them?
Go online, browse through forums related to your products/services, check out Quora and get involved in answering some questions, have a look at Reddit and find some threads that are relevant to your industry.
You want to put yourself in their shoes for a day. What are the biggest pain points that you can help them with right now! That’s what your content research should cover. It isn't rocket science. In fact, research makes your job easier because you will end up having clarity of goals and an action plan to fulfill your content marketing objectives due to the amount of accurate data you managed to generate.
5) Use tools for ideas and designing:
Always be on the lookout for the freshest and trending topics on the internet. Consider yourself as one of the suppliers of reliable content for your audience - would you want to take chances by omitting research out of your content creation strategy?
Topic and keyword research is important because you cannot assume what your audience wants. Find out the questions your audience is asking, their struggles, their problem areas, their doubts, their insincerities towards your product and so on.
What can you do to help them?
Go online, browse through forums related to your products/services, check out Quora and get involved in answering some questions, have a look at Reddit and find some threads that are relevant to your industry.
You want to put yourself in their shoes for a day. What are the biggest pain points that you can help them with right now! That’s what your content research should cover. It isn't rocket science. In fact, research makes your job easier because you will end up having clarity of goals and an action plan to fulfill your content marketing objectives due to the amount of accurate data you managed to generate.
5) Use tools for ideas and designing:
It’s only human to get tired thinking of content ideas. Don’t worry! You’re not alone in this battle to create engaging content - there are tools to help you seamlessly cross this vast ocean of content marketing.
There's a world of content generation and designing tools out there that not only help you think of ideas, but also enable you to design them neatly.
Lets divide those tools into 2 categories - Content Idea Generation and Content Designing.
The combined efforts of both categories of tools enable you to create content that will amaze your followers.
There's a world of content generation and designing tools out there that not only help you think of ideas, but also enable you to design them neatly.
Lets divide those tools into 2 categories - Content Idea Generation and Content Designing.
The combined efforts of both categories of tools enable you to create content that will amaze your followers.
To generate ideas for creating content, use tools such as Google Trends, Google Adwords Keyword Planner, Hubspot Blog Topic Generator, Webtexttool, AnswerThePublic and many more.
Once those ideas are ready, you can bring them to life by using visual and design tools such as Canva, Pablo, Infogr.am, Piktochart, Venngage and many others. For more tools, don’t forget to check out Hubspot’s 29 Free Online Design Tools for Creating Stunning Visual Content for the Web.
6) Create diversified content:
6) Create diversified content:
Diversity in your posts will help you reach all the segments of your followers. Due to the dynamic nature of how people absorb knowledge, make sure that you cover all types of preferences - such as blog posts, images, videos, infographics, ebooks, sound bytes, animation etc.
This will help you stay on top of the game by being the versatile provider of resources for everyone within and outside your fanbase.
7) Use the right language and titles:
This will help you stay on top of the game by being the versatile provider of resources for everyone within and outside your fanbase.
7) Use the right language and titles:
A gripping title combined with an easy-to-understand language and writing style is half the battle won.
Creating content is not enough. Gaining and retaining the attention of your audience is what differentiates you from those who use technical jargon and unattractive titles.
Select a writing style that suits your brand personality, because the way you write can majorly impact the way your brand is seen as.
Use your keywords in a title that’s too catchy to be ignored by adding numerical elements such as “6 Elements of an effective business website”, or “How To’s”, “The Ultimate guide…”, “Things you wish you knew”, etc.
If the title is interesting, only then will it be clicked, so make sure you make the most of this simple writing trick.
8) Finally, plan and execute:
Creating content is not enough. Gaining and retaining the attention of your audience is what differentiates you from those who use technical jargon and unattractive titles.
Select a writing style that suits your brand personality, because the way you write can majorly impact the way your brand is seen as.
Use your keywords in a title that’s too catchy to be ignored by adding numerical elements such as “6 Elements of an effective business website”, or “How To’s”, “The Ultimate guide…”, “Things you wish you knew”, etc.
If the title is interesting, only then will it be clicked, so make sure you make the most of this simple writing trick.
8) Finally, plan and execute:
Benjamin Franklin has very rightly stated, “By failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail.”
How can you take care of such an important business objective without planning for it?
All the above efforts might not work in your favour if you don’t have a content marketing plan in place. Planning might be slightly time-consuming in the beginning but ultimately, you end up saving a lot of time because you won’t have to rake your brains at the last minute to create ideas resulting in an ill-timed,ill-created post.
Set yourself a Content Plan, consisting of what you’re going to post and when, and stick to it! Use tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to keep your posts planned and scheduled. Doing this will relieve you from constantly posting everyday helping you focus on other important tasks.
In order to take the first steps in this direction, get this free content planning template from Hubspot.
All the above efforts might not work in your favour if you don’t have a content marketing plan in place. Planning might be slightly time-consuming in the beginning but ultimately, you end up saving a lot of time because you won’t have to rake your brains at the last minute to create ideas resulting in an ill-timed,ill-created post.
Set yourself a Content Plan, consisting of what you’re going to post and when, and stick to it! Use tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to keep your posts planned and scheduled. Doing this will relieve you from constantly posting everyday helping you focus on other important tasks.
In order to take the first steps in this direction, get this free content planning template from Hubspot.
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