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.
