Social media is a fantastic marketing tool for businesses. However, if you are not using it correctly, you will not have the kind of impact you were hoping for. That is probably because you have not developed a property social media strategy from the bottom up. You need to develop a broad structure and content base before you even begin creating posts. Occasionally posting random promotional content will not do the trick, it will be passed over. You need to develop interest first. To do this, you need an overarching narrative and structure that holds everything together. Once you have that in place, you can begin developing hard-hitting, high-quality content for each of your feeds.

Branding

The first thing you need to create great content is strong branding. Branding is far more than just a logo and some beautiful company colors, it is a whole philosophical approach. It encompasses your core values, your socio-economical position, your company culture. It is the core beliefs that your company adheres to. It is how you position yourself in the world. It helps if you have a strong company narrative and a creation story. Something that your customer base can identify with. It may be provident to do a fair bit of customer research to discover what issues your customer holds dear before going full throttle. Whatever the case may be, strong branding serves as a core, as a skeleton, your content can be aligned with. It means that you have a coherent strategy too. All key messages relate in some way back to the core. This helps build trust and loyalty. 

Content Objectives and Goals

Before you start developing your content, you need to work out what the purpose is. Are you looking to engage with more people, are you looking for a much broader reach, is it all about traffic to the website, etc. If you do not know what you are aiming for, it is difficult to create content to serve a particular function. Once you know what you are doing, you need to create the relevant analytical metrics to analyze the results effectively. Only through adequate measuring will you know if a particular post has served to correct function. Trial and error will help you create focused posts designed for a particular purpose going forward.

Monitor the Competition

When it comes to developing your own content, perhaps you need to check out the competition first. You can use competitive analysis software which will give you insights into what works for them and what does not. Clearly, you can observe the posts, developing an understanding of how they use branding in the posts. As well as the written word, tone, style, images, videos etc. You can learn a lot from looking at your competitors. Additionally, take a look at some other social media sites too, such as some of the most popular brands, or some of your own personal favorites, and learn how they structure their posts. The more research you do, the better your own posts will be.      

Planning Your Content

If you have existing social media accounts and have already begun posting, you should perform a social media audit of all the existing content in your streams. Try and gather which post types work for each platform, and then distinguish them from the content type. If you have installed any analytics software onto your account, then this is the time to delve into the data you have already gathered. Many social media platforms actually have their own analytics or insights tools that you can use. Think about the types of posts that have had the biggest impact. Think about the language you have used, is it emotive, educational, didactic, etc? think about the way you have connected to your brand via key messages. What about the images and videos, which had a high engagement rate. All that data will help you focus your up-and-coming posts. You can start developing a storyboard of ideas for each platform that link together and are based on the insights you have already gathered. Think of the 20-80 strategy. Where only 20% of the posts are related to promoting the brand and products, while the other 80% are devoted to informing, educating, engaging, and entertaining your potential customer case. It may also help if you develop a social media calendar. This will help you deploy your posts in a time-appropriate and hard-hitting manner. You need to think that less is more too. Think high-quality posts overabundance and posting two to three times a day at key times for your customer. That could be early in the morning as they have their morning coffee and scroll through social media, for example. 

Create High-Quality Content

So you have an idea of what works and what doesn’t, you have a basic sketch of the plan, you have a strong brand and ethical philosophy to fall back on, all you need now is to develop high-quality content. There are a range of things that fall under the content bracket, such as the written word, Images, Videos, Live Videos, Infographics, Animations, Gifs, Memes, to name a few. You need to work out which formats correspond with your brand and key messages. Additionally, each platform works better with certain content types. For example, LinkedIn and Facebook are great for the more written content-heavy styles. You can post whale stories of use snippets to link back to your website. Twitter is another great one of snippets of information with links. Instagram is clearly great for images. However, they need to be high-quality and well thought out. You can use YouTube for promos and link there from any site or platform. You can even create animations using a Animation Studio to tell the story of your brand or any other relevant piece of information. As long as you have the right analytical measurements in place, you will be able to work out what works and what doesn’t, and crater better and more focused posts going forward.