Social media content has gained prominence over the last few years due to the benefits it provides. As per the statistics, social media is used by more than 60% of people i.e. 4.8 billion people around the world. On average, people spend 2h 24m every day on social media.
Good social media content can help you reach an expanded audience. You can get more followers and increase awareness about your brand. Social media content marketing is a cost-effective strategy that can help even small businesses to reach a large audience.
Social media content is a great way to put your brand in front of people. You can create a brand persona to communicate & engage with your target customers to inform them about your products or service.
By posting social media content with your website link, you can drive traffic to your website. Creating social media content can help to increase your brand visibility. The more people see your brand, the more they’ll come to your site and convert.
Creating content for social media doesn’t mean that you just need to advertise or promote your business to people. To build relationships with customers you need to provide them with something of value. Don’t directly try to sell as it might be a big turn-off for your customers.
How to create content for social media? Make sure your social media content plan follows the 80/20 rule. It means posting 80% engaging, informative, & educational content and 20% promotional content. In this blog, we will discuss in detail how to create a social media content plan and the types of social media posts to include.
What is a social media content plan?
For creating social media content that delivers results, you need to have a robust plan. Social media content plan can help you achieve more than just followers. A strong online presence of a brand helps establish the trust of people. If you’re available to people through different touchpoints, it makes them believe that they can reach out to you easily.
To generate social media content you should use different types of content like videos, blogs, images, infographics, ebooks, etc. Try not to bore your followers by posting the same type of social media content. Also, plan your captions and post content priorly.
For example, if you’re posting a photo of a client with your product, you need to tell your audience what’s happening in the photo. Captions play an important role in helping the audience know and understand the entire story in the picture.
Social media content plan helps you have a clear idea of what and when are you posting different types of content. For example, you’re planning to conduct an online contest. Then, you need to decide the content that you’ll post and its sequence.
Steps for creating a social media content plan
A social media plan can help you execute your social media content strategy effectively. Here, we have given steps that you can follow to create your social media content plan.
1. Know your target audience
Knowing and understanding your audience will help you plan your social media content. You can research and find out what type of content your target audience like the most. See on which social media platforms your prospective customers are most active.
For example, if you have a B2B business, then your target customers might be available on LinkedIn and Facebook. eCommerce businesses can perform well on social media platforms like Instagram and Youtube.
To understand your audience you should start by determining their age, gender, location, interests, preferences, etc. Create buyer personas and think about the problems and pain points that your product can help them resolve. This way you can create a social media content plan that works well.
2. Set goals and KPIs
For measuring the success of your social media content creation, it’s vital to track progress. You should see where you are at and what you aim to achieve through social media marketing content. You can have goals like, you want to expand your reach from 2k to 5k . You can aim to increase your lead inflow and website traffic.
Set goals on the basis of where you are presently and how can you achieve them through different platforms. Make sure to set realistic and attainable goals for your social media content strategy. Keep in mind to keep track of your progress and check what’s working and what’s not. This way you can ensure, you’re investing your time and efforts in the right platforms.
3. Competitive analysis
Have a look at your competitors’ social media profiles to begin with your social media content strategy. Check and find out what they have achieved through social media. See which type of content is performing well and getting the highest engagement. All this information can help you in content creation for social media. However, make sure that you’re not copying your competitors completely. Try to create unique content that helps engage your audience and bring them to your site.
4. Use the existing content
You might already have uploaded a lot of content on your website. You can use this content on your social media posts like blogs, testimonials, reviews, etc. For example, if you have a blog on your website, you can create content out of it and post it on social media. Also, provide the link to the website blog to increase website traffic. You can use your site’s infographics or videos to post on social media.
5. Developing content for social media
Creating content for social media marketing is easy if you’ve got a plan in hand. Nowadays, you can create social media content with so many tools available. You don’t need to be a professional designer to make beautiful posts. You can use a content creation tool to develop different types of content posts for social media.
You can also use user-generated content to promote your brand online. For example, Apple asked its users to post their best images with #ShotoniPhone. Apple posted these images on its social media account. This way they were able to engage with their followers and bring new people to their brand. Similarly, you can use user-generated content on your social media accounts. You can ask users to send their photos or videos with your products to get featured on your social media page.
6. A social media content calendar
A social media content calendar can help you plan things priorly. You can make sure that the content and images are ready before time. Avoid the last-minute hassle and schedule your posts beforehand. You can use a social media management platform like Webmaxy eGrowth.
Schedule your posts for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn with eGrowth. Track your different social media posts’ performance in the dashboard. You can find out which post is performing the best and the worst. This way you can see and analyze how you can improve your social media content generation.
7. Evaluate your social media content
Once you have posted content, don’t think your work is done. You must regularly evaluate your content, to determine which types of content for social media are working. Keep track of likes, comments, shares, and engagement of your posts. Find out the clicks and conversions that you’re getting from distinct social media channels. It will help you improve your social media content strategy and drive better results.
Types of social media content you can post
The success of your social media content strategy depends on the quality of the content you post. Attractive, engaging, and high-performing content can help you bring in new customers and add value to your existing customer experience. To create the best content strategy make sure that you use different social media content categories.
When you include distinct content types, you offer a variety to your audience. Then, there are fewer chances of them getting bored and unfollowing your social media profile. How to create content for social media? Here, we have discussed different types of social media content that you can incorporate into your strategy.
1. Blogs, articles, and guides
Blogs, articles, and guides can help you provide educational and informative content to your target audience. You can demonstrate your company’s expertise and knowledge in the field. This way you can also build credibility in the audience by showing that you know what you’re doing.
You can create compelling content by talking about your prospective customers’ problems and then providing them with solutions. You can explain how your product or service can help them resolve their issues. Give answers to people’s problem statements by going to its depth.
The best platforms to post long-form content are LinkedIn and Facebook. You can post articles of 1500 words and more. You can also upload blogs to your website and post a short description of it along with its link on your social media profiles. This way, you’ll be able to drive traffic to your website.
2. Images
High-quality images are a type of social media content that can help you increase engagement. Most of the time people are scrolling on social media but a good image makes them stop for a while.
Visual content can help you engage customers more effectively than long-form content. These days people are always running out of time and want quick & short answers. You can post images and infographics with some brief information.
This way people can get a brief overview within a few seconds. You can use image-focused platforms like Instagram to post images and get immediate customers’ attention. Try to use creative and quality images to get high engagement and clicks.
3. Videos
What content types for social media work the best? As per statistics, 91% of customers want to see more video content from brands online. Videos can help you grasp customers’ attention. There are many ways in which you can post social media content videos like Instagram reels, Youtube shorts, stories, LinkedIn, etc.
You can make videos considering distinct formats like how-to guides, demos, interviews, testimonials, inventory tour, and more. Video content will not only help you increase engagement but show the real side of your business. For example, you can show people the natural ingredients that you use to create your products.
For video marketing, you can create videos using still images, animations, and video editing tools. You can post video content on different social media marketing channels like Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook.
4. Quotes
You can post quotes to inspire and motivate people. People like it when they come across posts that encourage them to improve and do better in life. If you’re in a hurry, then you can post quotes in just text form. But to make your quotes impressive, you can post them with high-quality visuals. There are a variety of quotes that you can post such as on life, funny, motivational, and famous quotes.
5. User-generated content (UGC)
User-generated content is the social media content that customers create. You can use user-generated content and repost it. For example, you can conduct a contest in which you can ask people to post their image with your product. Then, you can repost the best ones among those.
UGC is a great way to connect with customers and encourage them to participate actively in your brand activities. You can also give special gifts and offers to your winning customers. Re-share and retweet your user’s content in which they’re talking positively about your brand.
6. Customer testimonials
People tend to trust other customers more than they trust a brand’s claims. You can post good customer testimonials and reviews in your social media content. Testimonials and reviews can help build trust and establish credibility. They’re social proof that makes people believe that you’re worth it. To get maximum reviews from customers, you can provide them with reward points.
7. Questions & answers
The best way to engage with your target audience is by giving them an opportunity to ask questions. Many times customers like to actively engage with a brand. They have questions or doubts that they don’t ask otherwise.
You can make people ask questions in stories and provide answers in social media content posts. This is also a good way to initiate conversations with people. It also shows customers that you care about their opinions and satisfaction.
8. Memes
Memes are social media content examples that have recently been taken up by many brands. The reason is the engagement it can drive. People like to share short and simple humorous content. They are the perfect source of entertainment for customers.
You can post memes to get likes and shares from customers. Most of the people when they like something, they tend to share it with their friends and family. This way memes can also help you to expand your reach.
Some of the brands which are using memes in their social media content strategy are Swiggy and Zomato. Below, we have given an example of a Zomato meme that went viral. They used the names of famous series and added food names instead.
9. Polls
The easiest way to interact with your audience is through polls. You can ask people questions like, on which topic they want your next podcast to be on. Polls can not only help you to engage with your audience but understand what they think. You can use polls to gather user information and increase engagement. So, creating polls is a good social media post creation that you can include in your marketing strategy.
10. Research and statistics
People are interested to know the latest findings and statistics. You can share statistics with your target audience and make them aware. Share facts and statistics that are related to your industry.
For example, “More than half of the world now uses social media which is 60%. It includes 4.80 billion people around the world. The average daily time spent by people using social media is 2h 24m.”
Present your brand research findings to make people believe that you’re here to solve real problems. You can also give statistics regarding how your product or service has been able to help your customers.
11. Contests
Contests are a type of social media content that’s successful in engaging people. People love to win and you can offer them something worth winning. You can give people a gift hamper with your products.
Start with planning the rules to enter and participate in the contest. Next, decide the time duration for which you want to conduct the contest. Choose a social media platform that has the maximum of your target audience.
You can conduct a contest in which you can ask people to tag other people. This way you can increase your brand reach. However, don’t conduct contests on platforms that are professional like LinkedIn.
12. GIFs
GIFs are animations that you can use in your social media content strategy. You can use images, videos, or text to create GIFs. They are great to use when you don’t want to write too much content. They are pleasant to watch and entertaining. People also tend to share funny and entertaining GIFs in their friend circle.
When you are short of time, GIFs come to the rescue. You can add punchlines and create a GIF to post on social media. Make GIFs interesting and comical which makes people not only engage with your social media but share it as well.
13. Influencer marketing
Nowadays, influencers have a great impact on audiences. People follow influencers and are affected by their opinions. You can collaborate with influencers and ask them to give your product review.
Influencer marketing can help you affect the purchase decision of your audience. You can partner with influencers that talk about products related to your industry. For example, you can collaborate with an influencer who’s in the fashion industry to promote your brand lipstick.
14. Post collabs
Post collabs are a good way to tap into new audiences. You can work with a social media user or brand to create content together. You can use different social media content types for post collabs.
By doing post collab, you can increase your reach as you’ll be able to show your brand on the followers feed of your collaborator. This not only helps to boost reach but instantly builds trust in the mind of the influencer’s followers.
15. Stories
Stories are different than the regular posts that go on followers’ feeds. Now, almost every platform has a story feature. Stories are temporary and are there for 24 hours. This is what makes them appealing and advantageous.
You can use stories to make announcements and create time-based offers. To boost sales, you can release a 24hr valid code. The fear of missing out will make people use this code to get extra discounts.
Adding stories also makes people believe that you are active and consistent on your social media profiles. Never go out of your followers’ minds by posting stories regularly. If you don’t have anything to post on the story, promote your existing posts.
Social media content: The conclusion
Social media content strategy can help you meet your business objectives. You can increase your business reach and bring more conversions. Most of the people are active on different social media platforms these days. You should consider the social media platforms that have your target audience.
Once you have selected the right social media platforms, you can create your social media plan. To get the best out of social media, you must use different social media content types. For creating a content calendar and scheduling posts, you can use Webmaxy eGrowth.
Webmaxy eGrowth comes with a wide range of features like a KPI dashboard, customer segmentation, marketing workflow, marketing insights, social campaigns, email marketing, Whatsapp marketing, customer loyalty, omnichannel support, and retargeting.
Schedule a call with our experts to learn more about Webmaxy eGrowth or email us at [email protected].
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