Social media offers an incredible platform for businesses of all sizes to engage and interact with new and existing customers and clients. In this guide, we’ll look at how to come up with social media content that is relevant and useful to your target audience.
Before creating anything
Before you create or share anything, it’s essential to consider three key factors: your target market, your reason for sharing content and the value you’re offering your readers and followers. By answering questions and ensuring you have a clear focus before you begin, you can maximise the chances of achieving your desired outcomes.
- Define your target audience
Before you start conjuring up ideas or writing articles or putting posts together, it’s vital to define your audience. Who are you looking to attract? This is crucial because it will affect the content focus, the networks and platforms you use, the way you present your content and the tone of voice. Once you have established an ideal buyer persona, use analytics and research Internet usage and buying habits to boost your chances of creating high-quality leads and ensure you reach people who are likely to have a genuine interest in the products or services you sell.
- What is your why?
Whenever you post or share content on social media, there should be an objective. Think about what you want to achieve with your social media campaigns. Once your targets are clear, you can figure out the best ways to hit your goals.
- What value are you giving?
The most effective content serves a purpose. Before you start creating content or writing for the web, think about what you’re offering your audience and how you can add value to your posts. You could provide useful advice, product demonstrations, outfit ideas or answer frequently asked questions, for example. This will have more impact than a generic post.
Content creation methods
There are several methods you can use to generate social media content ideas. You might already have ideas whizzing around in your head, but it’s also wise to plan strategically and to use research and monitoring to inform your choices. You can analyse audience behaviour and evaluate how people react to different types of post and content to update and refresh your strategy as you go. If you’re wondering how to come up with social media content and looking for inspiration to create captivating, useful, engaging content, here are some suggestions to consider:
Creating content that answers questions or solves problems
Often, web users open search engines or social media feeds looking for the answers to questions or advice or tips to solve problems. As a content creator, you can add value to your posts, enhance customer service and increase consumer confidence by providing accurate information, easy access to guidelines and demonstrations and offering rapid responses. Examples of content ideas include help guides, step-by-step instructions or tutorials and frequently asked questions answered in short interview clips. By providing answers and solving problems via social media, brands can build buyer confidence and increase the chances of converting leads. If customers have questions about an item in their cart, they may abandon it if they can’t find the answer quickly.
Engaging in other people’s posts
According to the latest statistics, there are currently over 3.5 billion active social media users in the world (source). Social networks actively encourage communication and facilitate interaction and engaging in other people’s posts can trigger ideas and help you develop and build on content strategies that target your ideal buyer or customer. Building a network of contacts and virtual friends and followers can open doors and provide inspiration, as well as enabling your business to take advantage of establishing relationships with customers and potential business clients. Take ideas from other posts, interact with users and start conversations. Rather than leaving simple comments, like ‘great post,’ delve deeper into the subjects that are up for discussion, read other people’s feedback, share posts and use the debate to formulate new ideas, which will appeal to and attract those who are already involved in the conversation.
Share your problems and experiences
One of the most advantageous aspects of social media marketing is the opportunity to display a human side and showcase the personality and ethos of your brand. By creating visual content for social media and curating posts, you can share your own experiences and talk about problems you’ve encountered and solved to build deeper connections, tell people more about your business and what it stands for and facilitate engagement. Being open and honest about issues and negative experiences can also improve transparency and foster trust. Figures show that 86% of shoppers prefer brands to be transparent and authentic on social media (source).
Find low competition long-tail keywords
When looking for content creation tips to make your social media posts more impactful and accessible, it’s beneficial to consider finding long-tail keywords to write about. Long-tail keywords tend to be less popular than shorter search terms and keywords, and as a result, competition is not as fierce. The upshot is that long-tail keywords often convert extremely well because they offer more specificity and relevancy. According to research conducted by Wordstream, the average conversion rate for the top 10% of landing pages is 11.45%. For long-tail keywords, the figure rises to 36% (source). People who have search queries don’t want to trawl through pages of generic results that aren’t actually useful. Using long-tail keywords enables people to gather more relevant information and access content that serves a purpose. As a content creator, you can utilise search engine analysis and keyword research to find low-competition long-tail keywords that are linked to subjects, products, services or topics you want to discuss or share on social media.
Take notes on everything
Flashes of inspiration can come out of the blue when you’re thinking about creating content, and it’s useful to get into the practice of taking notes and carrying a notebook or your phone around with you so that you can jot down ideas on the move. You might find that articles or books you read, conversation topics that crop up in the office, TV shows you watch or discussions you happen to overhear on the bus or in a cafe inspire you. When you come to create posts or share stories, you can read through your notes and start creating outlines and developing your ideas.
Take topics out of existing blog posts and expand on them
Blog posts generate reactions and provoke thoughts. Even if you’ve written the post, you might find that you have ideas that spring to mind once you’ve shared an article, or that your opinion changes or the situation develops over the course of time. Going back through previous blog posts, looking at reader comments and reactions and exploring topics that seem to trigger debate or encourage people to interact with the article is an excellent way to develop content and to ensure your posts are relevant to your target market. Expand on what you’ve already said, provide updates if you’re discussing an event or a scenario that is ongoing and consider looking at popular subjects from a different angle or perspective.
Clustering and brainstorming
Brainstorming is a technique that enables you to note down ideas or thoughts freely, and it can be instrumental in creating content and laying the foundations for an article or a series of posts. Through brainstorming, you can start clustering, building on ideas that are linked and intertwined to create a more specific approach, theme or subject. For businesses, it can be useful to explore brainstorming and clustering topics that are discussed within the industry or sector to produce content that is relevant to the target buyer and interesting to the audience.
Loosening up
Social media provides an outlet for brands to loosen up and strike a balance between talking and writing about business and building relationships with customers and followers via techniques like storytelling. Social media users respond positively to brands that they follow and interact with on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Statistics show that 90% of consumers who connect with businesses on social media buy from those brands (source). People buy from people and injecting personality and telling stories followers can relate to can help to boost conversion rates and enhance brand image. With features like Instagram Stories and the option to add images and video clips to text, storytelling is an incredible way for brands to connect with audiences and encourage them to share posts and buy products and services. Over 90% of mobile users share videos with others and 64% of web users make a purchase after watching brand videos on social networks (source). It’s beneficial to use social media to develop relationships and let followers and virtual friends get to know your brand.
Summary
Social media content can be extremely powerful, but it’s critical to ensure you produce the right type of content to connect with your audience and achieve your objectives. Before you start thinking about how to come up with social media content, create an ideal buyer persona, think about what you want to gain from your posts and how you’re going to use social media to benefit your customers and offer value. When drawing up plans for content creation on social media, consider your audience, look to build on and expand previous posts, think about solving problems, answering questions and using your own experiences and take notes constantly. Analyse reactions to different topics to trigger further discussion, add a human side to your business through your posts, engage with others and look for long-tail keywords to write about. Be original, be creative, always ensure your posts are valuable and use platforms to strengthen ties and encourage interaction.