Are you a social media marketer or writer looking for social media content marketing tips?
Then look no further.
Many marketers need help creating better content. Google decided to fight “black hat tactics” by making their algorithm rank informative content higher in searches. Keyword stuffing isn’t going to work anymore. Everyone needs to improve their content quality to rank today.
Creating valuable content in social media is trending. If you want to stay abreast of the competition, you must have strong writing skills and create content that will win over your audience. Writing valuable content will help you to grow your audience and business.
In this post, we’re going to cover some writing tips that help you create valuable social media content for marketing.
Let’s get started!
What is Social Media Content Marketing?
To begin, let’s explain that Social Media Content Marketing is a strategy that uses consistent, valuable, niche-related content as the basis of a marketing campaign through social media.
This strategy allows companies to engage their audiences, refine and promote their brands, and most importantly, drive sales and profits.
By establishing yourself as an authority in your niche on social media, you’ll also increase your share of voice and be able to drive trends in your market. Properly deployed, social media content marketing could even let you “go viral” and become a phenomenon! But,
it all begins with planning and research.
Add Value to Your Posts
DON’T spend all your time on the social web directly promoting your products and services. You won’t capture an audience that way. Again, you must create content, and add value to your work. The “hard sell” approach does not work with today’s savvy, internet-informed consumers.
Your focus should be on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers (your customers).
In time, your audience will become a powerful source of word-of-mouth marketing for your business. Money will flow to you from the audience you captured, and the relationships you cultivated.
Social Media Content Marketing Adds Value to Your Business
Engagement is at the heart of effective social media content marketing. Surely, without it, you’re left with a megaphone and no one listening.
In addition to simply pushing ads, firms can build a rapport with their clients before making sales. These bonds are what keeps clients happy and coming back, increasing both loyalty and retention. If those customers become advocates and increase your word-of-mouth presence, then you’ll start seeing amazing returns.
Post Frequently
Now that you know you need to create valuable content, you need to also create and post your valuable content frequently.
Yes, let me repeat that you need to create content frequently if you want to win at social media marketing (SMM). Content is king. There is nothing quite as sad as visiting a page you like, and finding almost nothing there, or nothing new.
But you’re probably wondering… How much should I post a day?
This is a very common question, and there is no right or wrong answer here. Your frequency of updates simply depends on your audience, their appetite, and what you have to say. There has been some research on this topic that can act as a general guideline in your efforts. But as with most things, it’s best to test and see what works best for you and your audience on each platform.
Most importantly, don’t send them to an empty page. Make sure you post some content over the course of several days or weeks, before you start following people or driving traffic to your new page. This helps reassure visitors that there is something there worth following.
Plan Ahead
After you know what platforms you are going to use, it’s important to keep a content or publishing calendar. This will help you manage them. The use of content calendars is becoming more popular than ever.
Sites like HootSuite make it easy to post and schedule your content for every day of the week in one sitting. You can also plan your content creation using an Excel spreadsheet or Word document. Regardless, planning helps ensure you’re fully-optimizing events, promotions, and interests relevant to your audience.
Research your market, and your competitors. See what topics they are covering in their content, and do similar articles and posts. If you can’t beat them, join them. Then do it better!
When you begin creating frequent content, it may seem overwhelming, because there can be so much to cover. The great thing about social media marketing, though, is that once you get the basics settled, most of the skills are transferable to whatever new site comes along. Also, since there are a limited amount of topics to cover in any niche, you’ll eventually get to a point where you’ve got enough topics and types of posts designed. Then, you can reuse and spin the content, keeping it fresh, updating old posts and articles.
Be Aware of Current Events
During solemn times, natural disasters, tragedies, events of terrorism, etc., you must immediately turn off your social media content marketing. If you’re using a scheduling service to post content for you, shut it off at the first sign of a catastrophic event of any kind. Your timing could be incredibly insensitive. Not doing so could even cause severe backlash against your brand.
Build Your Influence
Social media content marketing requires finding some people with influence online in your market or niche. Target blogs and pages that have gained a quality audience, and are likely to be interested in your business. Strive to connect and build relationships with them. If you seem like an authoritative voice with interesting and useful posts, then they might in turn share your content with their followers. Obviously, this could open your business to a huge new audience.
However, before you can build this influence, you must first seek out some people of influence in your market. Engage them, once you identify the best candidates. Then you can grow that following by seeking out more “influencers” among their followers.
Types of Content You Should Share
A common (and understandable) mistake that many make as they’re diving into social media is limiting their content to marketing updates. This is reflective of the traditional marketing world in which it’s all outbound push messaging. “BUY NOW!”
However, things have changed. Today, we build our marketing efforts on trust, engagement, and community. As mentioned earlier, the days of the hard sell are dead and buried. Consumers do not respond to it.
There is, of course, a time and place for marketing and promotional messages, but don’t limit yourself. Consider broadening your scope a bit. Shoppers today are used to a mix of news, humor and entertainment in their media feeds. You must provide all of them, too. This will make your content more appealing, and lessen the burden of creation.
Some options for types of updates may include:
Adjacent Content
It’s a pretty safe bet that if someone is following you, they’re interested in what you offer. It’s an even safer bet to say their interests don’t stop there. Share content that’s tangentially relevant to your business, or something involving common interests of your audience. For example, if you are a clothing retailer, you could post about up-and-coming beauty trends and products, or news from major designers. These topics quite likely directly align with the interests of your audience.
Tips and Tricks
Add value to the conversation by sharing content that will make your clients’ lives easier. (And there is a bonus in synergy for tips and tricks that help them use your products or services.)
Responses
Not every update has to stem from original ideas of yours; you can bounce off the ideas that other people are already posting. Social media (and social media content marketing) relies on conversations, so jump in and be a part of them. You can even look for Twitter chats that are relevant to your brand and dive in. (This is also a good way to get your account and brand more visibility.)
Non-Promotional Company Information
If your company does amazing volunteer work in your community, don’t be shy about sharing it! If there’s a rather impressive showing at the company Halloween party, share that, too. Giving a sneak peek into the culture and community within an organization goes a long way towards building relationships, by humanizing the brand. Social media trends show that companies who do this engage with their customers better.
Job Openings
Social channels can be an incredibly fruitful place for finding new talent and announcing job openings. Job seekers are increasingly using social media as a way of learning about companies and their open positions. It’s a match made in Internet heaven! Get those listings out there, and be sure to highlight the most important ones.
Jokes
This is a tricky one, and it’s more of a branding question than anything else.
First, know what your brand is and what kind of personality it embodies. If humor is not a part of that, you should avoid this type of post. It can backfire and be incredibly awkward.
If you are going to try humor, safety first! Ensure you’re not unintentionally sharing something that could be offensive by testing it among your colleagues, friends, or even family. Always err on the side of caution with sensitive topics; a disaster can be painful.
Once you’ve made sure the humor is acceptable, make sure it’s genuinely funny, because a bad joke is just embarrassing. Avoid joking about sensitive subjects like religion, politics, jokes that poke fun at any group, and jokes with a sexual theme. If possible, make it related to the goods and services you provide.
Now You’re Ready to Start Growing Your Audience
Companies have every reason to invest in quality content for their social media accounts. Using a social media content marketing strategy requires some planning and market research, but will pay both short and long-term dividends for your company.
By creating new, relevant content in your market, you’ll position yourself as an industry leader and influencer, increase your Share of Voice, and be able to drive trends.
Not doing so means that you’ll retain your current business trends in the short term, but could lose market share long term if your competitors choose to use social media content marketing. To be sure, the Internet is a revolutionary tool for business. You need to be a part of that revolution, or you’ll be left behind.
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