What Makes Good Social Media Content?

How do you make that content work for you?

But how do you get those customers and potential customers there in the first place? Post as and when you have time / remember and hope for the best?

No, unfortunately there is a bit more to it than just showing up and this is why businesses throughout Surrey and Sussex work with me, so they can get their social media producing the results they want.

What you post is unsurprisingly one of the key elements to achieve social media success. Content is king, but whether that content is deemed good is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. I advise that focussing on creating engaging content for your audience is where your time is best spent.

Why is an engaged audience so important?

The powers that be behind these social media platforms have many goals but primarily they want people to stay on the platform. They do this by ensuring the user has a great experience i.e. showing them a continuous feed of content they enjoy or gain from. What content is shown to which people is decided upon by a clever and highly complex piece of software, referred to as the algorithm.

From a social media perspective, engagement is when your content strikes a chord with your audience to such a level that it provokes them to take action - a like, comment, share or a save. A platform’s algorithm is what decides who sees what content. What an engaged audience signals to this algorithm is that you are producing content that people like and it is this that triggers your content to be shown to them again, shown to more of your followers, as well as to new potential customers, in turn growing your audience.

But how do I produce this great content that gets loads of engagement?

As a social media specialist, this is something I get asked a lot and whether I am creating content for a client, or training them how to do it themselves, these five key considerations are always at the forefront of my mind.

1. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

It is said that if you talk to everyone you talk to no-one. If your customers don’t feel you are talking directly to them, they will never take action on a post they see. So have a real think about who you are targeting and create three or four customer avatars detailing everything about them. If your business has been running for a while, look at who is buying off you already and use this information as a starting point. It is these people that you must ensure you are talking to every single time you communicate with them on any channel.

2. MIX IT UP

Once you feel you have a good understanding of who you are talking to, you want to ensure your content is going to be varied enough to keep them interested and ultimately compelling enough for them to engage every time. If five times a week you tell someone to come to your shop, or buy off your website, your audience will soon get bored; there is no variation, no differentiation, they are not gaining anything new. Think of your social media pages as a magazine. Not every page of a magazine is about the same thing, yet people enjoy reading them from start to finish. What is the common ground between your business and your ideal audience? Selling your product or service to your audience is a good chunk of the content pie, but keeping it varied and giving people that extra bit, will keep them engaged and wanting more.

3. DIG DEEP

So, you now know who you are talking to and the topics you are going to talk to them about, but what will really cause that reaction? What will resonate to such an extent that they have to acknowledge what they have seen or read?

With your ideal audience in mind ensuring your content adds value, educates, resonates or entertains is a quick-fire mix to guarantee they will take action every time. 

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