Content marketers are always looking for new ways to grow their brands and build awareness. To increase your business, you need to go where the customers are – and these days, your potential customers are almost guaranteed to be on some sort of social media network.
Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms have changed marketing. All businesses should be leveraging the power these platforms offer.
Social media marketing is simpler than you might expect, if you haven’t investigated its possibilities at this point. The key to effective social media marketing is consistency. You need to be able to regularly connect with your audience in meaningful ways and incentivize them to share your social media content with their own circles.
Failing this, your social media presence will wither, because you’ll quickly gain a reputation for not paying enough attention to your audience. Consistency should be a priority throughout all your social media marketing efforts, and in this article, we'll explore a few fantastic methods to generate stellar social media content.
Turn Social Media Followers into Customers
Consumers are far more likely to do business with brands that are authentic and approachable. Few people find the stuffy corporate mentality relatable, so your social media presence should reflect your brand’s fun and human side. Relate personally to your audience, but don’t tread into anything tasteless. There’s a line between being relaxed and being insensitive. If you want to turn your followers into customers, they need to respect your brand, your offerings, and your message, and your social media content should delight – not alienate – potential customers.
Consumers see countless promoted ads and sponsored content on social media, and anything that even remotely resembles an ad is usually dismissed immediately – today’s consumers are more tech-savvy and ad-wary than any other generation, and it’s due to the fact that there is simply so much content available, consumers are only going to bother with the content that resonates with them personally. The key to resonating with your social media followers is sparking curiosity.
You can accomplish this without delving into the dreaded realm of “click-bait,” misleading headlines meant to generate ad revenue by enticing clicks from viewers. Instead, you want to challenge your audience’s accepted positions about a topic, or tease that you may have information they would find relevant or valuable. It’s all about substance in this regard.
If you don’t have anything of value to offer, your audience’s attention is going to quickly peter out.
Storytelling Hits Home
Storytelling is a universal part of the human experience that transcends race, culture, religion, and national borders. Every person on Earth has experienced a story or told their own in some way, and telling stories is a great way for your brand to hit home with your audience on a personal level. Stories are inherently more engaging than simple social media posts. Instead of a boring status update, craft your post into something more engaging that tells a story. You’ll be surprised by the results when you take this approach.
Stay On-Message
Your audience probably has some solid expectations when it comes to your brand’s message. Your tone, positions, and style need to stay relatively consistent or you risk alienating some of your audience. This does not mean you shouldn’t experiment with new ways of engaging on social media – just that you can’t stray too far from the image you’ve already cultivated. There’s a big difference between challenging your audience with a new take on a topic and completely shifting gears on a long-standing position.
The key to building your community of followers is generating engagement – you need to be able to supply your audience with content that is going to delight them and encourage them to stay in touch with your brand. Again, consistency is crucial: you can’t stray too far from your usual voice, but on that same note, you don’t want to let your social media platform stagnate and become predictable.
Measure Your Progress
For all the efforts you make in social media marketing, it would be foolish not to set goals and regularly measure your progress toward them. Almost every social media platform offers users a means of tracking their engagement with others – even personal pages for private users allow them to see the impressions and reactions they’ve generated over time. For businesses, the analytic tools are far more robust. A major concern for every digital marketer is ROI – your efforts need to generate a positive return on the investment.
Analytics not only help you gauge the tangible results in terms of business your social media platform has generated, but will also help you devise new, better ways of reaching your audience in the future. When a post resonates with your audience far beyond the typical norm, analytics will help you discern what made that post especially potent. Tracking your progress is also going to help you react more quickly to shifting consumer expectations in the future. Set clear goals for your social media campaign and regularly check your metrics to see the progress you’ve made toward achieving those goals.
One of the best ways to track your progress on social media is to ask your followers for feedback. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to participate in short surveys, especially if it’s being conducted by a cherished brand. Ask your audience what they like or don’t like about your recent social media content and take the feedback to heart. Your brand exists to serve your customers, so prove this to them by carefully considering their feedback and incorporating it into future efforts.
Make Your Content Shareable
One of the biggest draws to social media marketing is the potential to grow your brand’s following explosively. Content on social media is meant to be shared and spread to others, so when you craft poignant, valuable content on your platform, your audience is going to be far more likely to share it with their social media networks.
Crafting shareable content is a complex process and one that deserves your attention. If you’re not creating content that is readily shareable, you’re missing out on vast potential for your brand. In order to create shareable content, you’re going to need to have a very accurate understanding of your target audience, what they need, what they like and don’t like, what problems they typically face, and deliver content that addresses these concerns.
Social media platforms are also immense hubs for popular culture. If you can find a way to link your content to the latest hit TV show or blockbuster movie, this is a great way to get your content into the conversation and spark interest from new potential audience members. Clever use of visual imagery is going to be a major factor in grabbing peoples’ attention.
Video Social Media Content is Incredibly Valuable
Social media platforms play host to over 100 million hours of video content that people view every single day. By not taking advantage of the popularity of video content, you’re doing your brand a disservice. Creating video content sounds more daunting than it actually is. Find ways to connect to your audience by creating something valuable, such as a quick how-to video or something that shows the human side of your brand.
Additionally, video content is a great way to demonstrate the value of your products and services to your audience. Consider creating a demonstration video for your latest product line or a parody of recent pop culture events that links to your brand. A little bit of humor and personality go a long way on social media, so try to craft video content that will delight and entertain your audience.
Find out how Ms. Ileane uses live video to create stellar social media content. Watch her playlist Learn to Live Stream with Ms. Ileane and discover exactly how you can connect with your audience on social media.
Hey Stephen,
You have highlighted the basic and the most important aspect of content marketing. Social media networks are the places to promote your content.
Posting more shareable content is the key. You should always connect with your followers to get more positive results.
Thanks for sharing with us.
~Ravi
Hi Ravi,
Thanks for writing and sharing your views. It’s not being lucky if someone has a large list of followers on social media platforms. Because somewhere it is linked with the type of content you post, your visual presence is important. Greater visibility is required for build better engagement. Otherwise, it’s quite disturbing when your audience is not responsive and you are not getting enough likes, comments, clicks, etc. Ensuring a steady and delightful content is essential in order to drive audience to your brand.
A lot of people who only get like 500-1000 people a day to their site sit back and feel sorry for themselves. Instead I suggest they invest all they can to serving those people and showing how much you value them, and then watch just how much more often your work will be shared.
If you can’t connect and bond with a small audience, how do you suppose you will if you are one day granted a massive one?
Hi Kael,
Wonderful advice! It’s also the sweetest one. I hope each one of us focus on the audience that we already have with our brand. They can take it forward for us, by connecting with their friends and colleagues.
Quality always surpasses quantity. No matter if we get fewer followers on our site in initial days, we must know how to retain them and value them by serving them in the right way. One single recommendation can take us far.
Hey Stephen,
Indeed some great points you have mentioned. Social Media is such a big power these days, the best place for content marketing.
We can get tons of customers & clients from social media, if we can promote our services or content the right way.
So, regarding that, your tips are valuable.
~ Jenny
Hi Jenny,
Glad that you get tons of customers from social media that inspire you to take wise steps to convert them finally. This is how when the right strategies and right steps taken by us pay back. We just need to take care of a few points and the rest is taken care of automatically. Keep writing.
This is a great post and yes, you definitely want to use all of these platforms to create new connections. The only way you can successfully do that is to schedule your posts several times a day, such as 3 hours a part or 3 times a day which does keep a good presence going. More importantly, you want to share highly engaging content. Most people are visual, and that being said you want to share eye candy. Links or plain text alone will not yield the results you want. I would love to talk more about this. Feel free to contact me at anytime.
Hi Miriam,
Thanks and I should say that you have made good points for connecting well with your audience. Scheduling time several times in a day can definitely help in organizing the post which are shared on social media. This also adds to better response from the followers as they know they are getting regular posts to read and respond. I hope many marketers are working in this manner to get better engagement.
Good tips. I try to spend some time everyday if I can on these social media sites and share some useful information and build on the followers.
Hi Shalu,
Thanks for writing. It’s good that you have slotted some time for spending on social media and be more active. In above comment, Miriam also emphasized on the same point that regular time slots on social media can help us become quick and more responsive. I hope you succeed in your venture, get more pace in connecting with your followers.
Hey Stephen,
Being a successful marketer is less about being lucky and more about understanding buyers’ psychology. Today, In high competitive era – you need to know what makes your customers tick and how to influence their purchasing decisions.
Our main business goal is to spark interest within our audience. Now-a-days, Social media platform are boon for online marketers if we use it wisely, it will definitely show positive results. Eventually, thanks for sharing your healthy experience with us.
With best wishes,
Amar kumar
Hi Amar,
Thanks for liking my post and calling it a healthy experience J !!! Social media is a great way to establish relationship between brands and people. Developing a marketing strategy on social media is vital for any business. For this, marketers should know what kicks their audience so that they can adopt right strategies to lure them.
Hi Stephen,
Nice to see your post here.
Social media has been the topmost method for driving traffic to your blog. Allowing readers to “share” content from your blog is strictly advised to any blogger who wants to get noticed out there.
If I have to break up my total time on a daily basis for my blog, if I spend 1hour writing content, I spend more than 5 hours promoting on social media. It is crazy but it works.
Hi Stephen,
Social Media is a great place today for promoting content and facebook alone has over 1 billion users which are a great opportunity.
SumoMe would be the best tool to make all content shareable and it’s super easy to use.
Hi Louis,
Thanks for sharing your views. Social media is indeed a place that grants much promise and opportunities to connect with the audience. One should just adopt the right direction to engage with them.
I am a newbie blogger so this article is of great use to me. It cleared the whole concept of guest blogging. Thank you so much!
Great piece Stephen! Very helpful tips. I was wondering, which social media platform do you recommend we utilize and focus more in engaging to followers?
Hi Rose,
Thanks for writing and finding it useful. See, you could choose any platform that thinks is compatible for bringing a good number of followers to you. The rest will depend on how you are going to create your content to attract the audience. It’s very important that you keep up the interest of your audience in your content. Be specific and be relevant. Always strive to share the best content and your followers will be with you. All the best.
Just noticed your response. Thank you Stephen for the tips! 🙂 Helps a lot.
Excellent tips…I need to get back on board with video. I think it’s the big shift social media is going toward and I’ve faltered in that. Though, I’ve noticed my personal stories perform much better than the basic “Top 10” posts and photo essays. Thanks!
Hi Ryan,
Nice pick that you have got from this post. Videos are doing big time currently. I am sure now when you know it, you are going to use them to get the best. Am glad that your personal stories have performed well and helped you get fame. Keep writing and keep sharing.
I like this article very much. It touches all the points to make a blog post popular. Making a shareable content is really a tricky task. But making a video isn’t possible all the time. If you could share the techniques to create videos it will be very helpful. Thank’s Stephen Moyers.
Hi Paul,
Firstly, thanks for liking the tips. Good, smart and relevant content would always work for a brand. It helps maximize the message you are trying to convey with the audience. As regards to creating videos, I would suggest you to go to some good sites to learn about it. You can also try YouTube and watch Apple’s amazing way of creating videos. Best efforts!