The Social Media Marketer

7 Tips For Creating Great Social Media Content

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Social media networks are a powerful, and usually free, outlet for marketing your business to hundreds of thousands of potential clients and customers. They provide interaction, opportunities for invaluable backlinks, and the possibility of your content going viral in a matter of minutes.

So why are some businesses incredibly successful with their social media content efforts while others struggle to maintain a following? The answer lies in knowing how to create compelling content for these audiences, so that you can lure them in. Consider the 7 following tips:

   1.  Choose Your Networks with Care

While social media networking can be powerful and effective, it is also time consuming. One mistake enthusiastic business owners make is joining too many networks and not being able to keep up with the demand for high quality social media content. Joining two or three networks that have an audience that would be interested in your product is much wiser than joining 10 random networks that may or may not be interested. Additionally, limiting your networks to targeted audiences helps you to balance your time and efforts more efficiently.

   2.   Study Your Audience

Before you go crazy posting an overload of social media content, spend some time studying the audience you are trying to relate to and interact with them when possible. Ask questions, offer opinions, but establish yourself as an active member of the community so that people won’t view your content as spam when you do begin to share it. Try to get feedback from the connections you make, such as what types of topics related to your business they’d like to know more about and what type of format they like to receive their content in—lists, guides, fact sheets, articles, etc.

   3.  Present Your Content in an Easy-to-Digest Format

If there is one thing internet users loathe it is visiting a webpage that may have the answers they seek, only to be faced with large, intimidating chunks of text. Your audience will typically scan an article before deciding to read it, so make this as easy as possible for them.

Both numbered lists and bulleted lists are incredibly popular as they allow readers to get a feel for the entire article without having to read through the whole thing.

  4.  Create Compelling Titles and Make the Content Relevant to the Title

When you are creating social media content, having an eye-catching, interesting title is definitely a positive. However, if you choose a title simply because you think it will garner attention rather than because it relates to your content, you will soon lose credibility among your audience. Your title is a promise: deliver on it.

  5.  Establish Yourself as an Authority

As a business owner, you qualify as an expert in your field. You are full of inside information, tips, facts, and tricks relating to all manner things in your chosen profession. Offering tidbits of this expertise quickly establishes you as an authority on the subject. To really maximize your authority potential, site credible, well-known resources in your posts and social media content, or consider conducting an interview with another expert to share.

   6.  Don’t Underestimate the Power of Imagery

While clever and colorful language does stimulate a response from your audience, there is a reason for the old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words. While not all forms of social media content are well suited to adding images, blog posts and articles are prime candidates.

In addition to providing a visual reinforcement to your content, images help to break up the text further, making them ideal for longer pieces of content that may otherwise seem overwhelming to a reader.

  7.  Let Your Personality Shine Through

It is important to maintain a certain level of professionalism when representing your business, but most audiences appreciate a little bit of personality rather than stiff, overly formal content. If you have the gift of wit, don’t be afraid to use it. If you are talented in humor, let your audience see it.

The key here is to keep your social media content 95 percent professional and 5 percent personal. This shows your audience that you know what you are talking about, but that you are also a real person—someone who is approachable and willing to interact with their clients.

Marketing your business with social media content is not an exact science and what works for one company may not work for another. Patience and perseverance pays off in this field, as does taking the time to make your content engaging, interesting, and relevant to your audience.