The content you post on social media has the power to turn your brand into a household name and turn your followers into fans. This kind of impact only comes from having a solid social media content strategy. It’s not enough to show up on every platform and sporadically update your audience when you have the time. The way to stand out on social media is to identify specific goals, create valuable posts that align with those goals, and distribute content on the right platforms. Then you can measure your results, and fine-tune your strategy over time.
There isn’t one cookie-cutter social media strategy that will guarantee success. Your strategy will differ depending on your industry and audience. There are, however, specific strategy you should follow to build out a plan that has longevity and helps your brand and business grow.
12 Content Strategies for Creating Social Media Content
Here are 12 strategies for creating social media content consistently.
1. Identify and set goals.
The first step towards a long-term social media strategy is to set your content goals. Having goals in mind will help you start planning out the type of content to create.
This process involves digging deep into your brand values as well as researching your audience.
Start by getting clear on your overall marketing goals and how you want your content marketing strategy to serve those goals. The more specific your marketing goals are, the better you will be able to tailor your social media content to meet those goals. For example, let’s say that your marketing goals are to convert more sales from social media. Then your strategy should incorporate posts that move people to a landing page or another part of your marketing funnel.
2. Plan your social content.
Once you’re clear on your goals, it’s time to conduct a social media content audit on the content you’ve created so far. Look at which posts performed well, which ones didn’t and what you posted on each platform. If you’re using a social media management platform like Sprout Social, you can look at all of your social media data and analytics in one place. You can use Sprout’s Report Builder for a holistic view of how all of your social media content is performing.
Even without a social media tool, you can analyze your data by exporting each platform’s analytics into a spreadsheet.
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest Business and LinkedIn Business accounts let you easily export your post and page analytics directly from the platform.
What you look for in the audit should align directly with your content goals. For example, if one of your goals is to improve brand awareness, then look at your follower count on each platform and identify which posts resulted in new followers. Now you have an idea of what types of content help expose your brand to new people who want to follow you.
A content audit will help you substantiate what you think is working well with quantitative data that shows you how each post performs.
You might notice a disconnect between posts you think should do well and the actual top performers. In this case, look closely at the language and tone you’re using on the underperforming content. You may have strayed away from your brand’s authentic voice. Your followers may interpret those posts as inauthentic or irrelevant, causing a decrease in engagement. Irrelevant posts are the second largest reason consumers unfollow brands on social media.
Some posts serve to help you meet bigger marketing goals. But even promotional content should be on brand and true to your voice. Remember that your audience began following you for a reason.
Stick with your unique voice and style as much as possible and create content that authentically markets your brand.
Having a consistent brand voice will also help you have a better understanding of who your audience is. You can’t create good social content without knowing who your followers are. During this phase, do some target audience research. Build a target persona of your audience and can compare it to who you think your target audience should be. Include things like basic demographics, acquisition channels and content preferences.
While you’re doing research, also take note of which platforms your content succeeds most on. You might want to target every social platform but it’s unrealistic to expect to perform well on all of them. You want to allocate your resources to the platforms that serve your brand and your audience the most.
3. Schedule time on your calendar for creating content.
Book an appointment with yourself. Start small with a 10-minute appointment just once a month or once a week. During that time, no one else can interrupt you. This is your opportunity to create a piece of content. It doesn’t have to be long, or complex. Write a paragraph about a recent project, or an upcoming event. Take a video of yourself talking about the value your business can bring.
Schedule a time to create content and keep it simple. You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll get into a groove and become more consistent in creating content for your brand.
4. Offer loyalty incentives to obtain user-generated content.
Local businesses have an advantage over their large corporate contemporaries in that they generally have loyal customers, and this translates well in obtaining user-generated content through loyalty incentives.
The access that small businesses have to their customers allows them to identify their interests to find what special offers would motivate their most loyal patrons to share UGC testimonials, and this results in not only obtaining engaging content but social proof.
Because user-generated content has social proof built right in, it increases the chances of not just getting more content but customers too. By providing loyalty incentives to customers, local businesses can curate a steady stream of engaging social media content that will provide valuable social proof to attract new customers.
5. Use FAQs for a goldmine of content topics.
Your company’s FAQ page can help you create content that answers prospects’ questions. For most businesses, customers tend to ask the same questions repeatedly. While this can be tiring, these queries indicate what people want to know most about your product and services. They also reveal what may be holding them back from conversion. Therefore, your FAQ page contains a goldmine of content topics.
While answering one question per post is essential, not everyone will see your initial post, so repurpose and reword these posts regularly. And ensure you include a link to your website’s FAQ page at the bottom of each post. Doing so will drive more traffic to your website while helping interested prospects learn more about your offering.
6. Tie your posts to local events and people’s interests.
If your business is tied to the local community then your social posts should follow the same rule. Make sure you talk and address things locals show an interest in (or are concerned about) and tie everything with local events and news.
This way you show your business is an integral part of the local landscape. Make sure you don’t send a ‘fake’ vibe. You have to genuinely care about the local community if you want the community to do the same.
7. Hop on the latest trends.
Social media trends are ever-changing and fleeting, so it’s important that you take advantage of whatever is trending on social media at the time and capitalize on it. The easiest platforms to find trends on are TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. It’s easy to share content on these platforms and go viral, so you just need to find these trends and put your own creative spin on them that makes your brand stand out and stick in your viewers’ minds. There always is some trend you can hop on, so don’t be afraid to ride the wave before it dies out.
8. Collaborate with local influencers.
Growing your local business need not be a time-intensive task if you can find the right people to spread the word for you. An effective way to create this buzz is by reaching out to local influencers — particularly those whose values align with yours. They’re likely to have an audience that you want to target and they’re sure to know what that audience likes. Through this collaboration, you can populate your feed consistently with content that appeals to your audience and gradually grows your social media presence.
9. Post behind the scene content.
My tip for creating consistent social media content is to create behind the scene content. It’s easy to create as you don’t have to spend time thinking up a compelling topic because there’s no need for scripting or planning—just random shots of the day-to-day operations of your employees. You can include shots of people working on projects together, eating lunch, making coffee, walking around or just goofing off in the office.
The idea is that these types of social media content are very engaging and show your audience that you’re a real company with real people doing real work, which can be an effective way to connect with customers and build trust. It’s also a great way to show off your culture and the personality of the company, helping you build a unique identity for your brand and differentiate yourself from the competition.
10. Create branded templates.
When creating content for social media, there is a high likelihood that posts will be similar in terms of theme and ideas. Many small businesses will create a repeated schedule for their weekly posts. For example, Mondays might be a ‘Monday motivation’ post, Wednesdays might be company news and Fridays may be case studies or interactive content.
Creating templates to use every time, not only saves a lot of time and resources but will also create a strong brand identity throughout all social media platforms. These templates will be designed to fit into the brand colors, style, typography, and graphics.
11. Repurpose your content through different channels.
Local businesses are usually strapped for time, money, and resources. So it’s crucial that they are able to get the most bang for their buck with any marketing campaign, including social.
The number one most effective technique for consistently creating social media content is to make one piece of content and then repurpose part of it for different channels.
Sometimes this requires updating the format or adding in a graphic, but ultimately a ton of effort isn’t needed to dramatically increase social media posting and effectiveness.
Here’s an example: – Record a podcast or a video aimed at helping your audience accomplish a task – Get the audio dictated and add it to the podcast episode or video on the company blog – Chop up the episode or video into 10 clips each with their own subtopic to post on Instagram or TikTok – Take the top 10 paragraphs or quotes and auto-publish them on Twitter – Make the outline of the video into bullet points and post them on your LinkedIn
12. Measure results.
The last step to an effective social media content strategy is measuring the results of all of your efforts. Proper tracking is going to be vital to creating a strategy with longevity. Keeping detailed metrics will help you tweak and optimize your plan over time. Ideally, you should analyze your content every month to keep track of what’s working. When analyzing your data, take a top-level view of your content over a given period. Take a look at how each piece of content performed and what variables it had working with it. Assess how well the content contributed to the overall content goals that you set in step one. A few of the most important social media metrics to measure include:
- Awareness – The number of times people saw your content as told by impressions and reach
- Engagements – The number of reactions, comments, clicks and shares your content gets
- ROI – Conversions and referrals from external sources
Like you did with the content audit, relate the analytics to your overall marketing goals. Using your goals as an anchor can help you accurately adjust your strategy. By measuring analytics each month, you’ll just have to make small tweaks to keep optimizing your social media content strategy.
Putting it all together
Effectively planning a social media content strategy is an ongoing cycle, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Plan out your process with the ideas above and stick to these essential steps to develop content planning that puts a strategic approach first.
