How to Create Solid Marketing Content for Social Media

Content marketing has taken up a lot of the slack left by the decline of print advertising; it’s grown into one of the most-used tools for making an impression on customers, old and new.

In recent years, social media has expanded to become an incredibly powerful way to promote your brand online. In fact, it’s pretty much necessary to maintain a social media presence to get relevant content noticed, and that means devising a fully optimized content strategy.

Creating an effective social media strategy isn’t easy. It must work on multiple fronts to attract and convert customers, and grow in relevance as an Internet presence. Take a look at the following principles for designing your social media content strategy.

Social media and content marketing are similar

The key to approaching your social media strategy is not to get scared off by the apparent novelty of social media. If you have a content marketing strategy at all, you’re already well on your way.

Social media and content marketing are both designed to pique customer interest and boost search engine rankings. The main advantage of social media is the ease with which it can be shared.

Your social media strategy doesn’t have to be especially different from your content marketing strategy. The central difference when you’re devising content for social media is making its shareability a top priority.

Social media gives your business the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise be unavailable to you. Create content your customers would be interested in sharing.

Target your messages

According to Betty Bennett, the Director of Content for Vorongo.com, “Writing quality content is easier when you know whom you’re writing for.”

When you launch your business, you likely have a certain set of customers in mind who are apt to be interested in your product or service. Many businesses find that, in practice, they attract customers they didn’t expect.

An excellent facet of social media is that it makes it very easy to learn who your followers are. You can target your content and messages to be more interesting to those people and encourage greater engagement.

Engage your followers with content that’s relevant to their interests. This will encourage them to share your content.

 

Timing is key

 

You can create an excellent post for your Twitter or Facebook page. But if you post it at the wrong time, it could die an instant death.

 

While there’s no particular “best” time to post on social networks, some windows are more likely to be the times when people are going to engage with your content. Engagement is what you’re after; if your fans see a post and don’t react in any way, that’s not going to help your business.

 

Different social networks offer different optimal times for posting. For Facebook, it’s better to post between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. For Google+, the window of 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. is preferable.

 

With Twitter, people tend to get the best results between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., and on Instagram, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Later in the evening, between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., is preferable for Pinterest followers.

 

Repurpose

 

Each social networking platform has another audience for you to reach. While there may be overlap among your fans, you shouldn’t underestimate how far a quality post can go if it’s posted in two places rather than one. When you create solid social media content, you definitely should post it in more than one place.

 

If a piece of content is doing well on one site, don’t hesitate to post it more than one time on that particular site. People turn to social media at different times throughout the day.

 

Though it’s certainly a good idea to post during each site’s optimal time, reposting at a different time gives you an opportunity to catch people who missed it the first time around.

What’s more, people who saw your post the first time and but were busy can more easily catch up if you post it again. Your content is valuable; don’t hesitate to re-post it.

Go visual

A social media post should be regarded as a kind of teaser for bigger content. People tend to scroll past text walls, even if they’d be interested in the content if in a different context.

One great way to capture attention and encourage people to read on is through visual content. That can drive traffic to your website, your services, and your products. It can also help you reach new audiences because it’s sharable.

On Twitter in particular, one way to get around the restrictive character limit is to post an image. This draws people in to read your brief statement, and can encourage them to find out more.

Improve your posts by looking at past content

Your first social media post probably isn’t going to be your best one. If you keep posting, however, you’ll eventually create content that engages people and inspires them to share it.

This will help you learn what kind of content your customer base responds to, so in the future you can create better material. Tools are available online to analyze the performance of your posts and the keywords they contain.

Creating an effective social media strategy takes time, commitment, and expertise. These tips should offer you a baseline for getting started.

[image error]