20 Tips for Crafting Compelling Social Content
If social networks are the vehicle that drives your message to customers and prospects, then content is the engine. Well-crafted content can help promote organic engagement, provide customer service, and build your brand’s reputation.
Content marketing is actually a subset of marketing along with social media marketing and advertising. Don’t underestimate the power of the content you produce. The messages in your posts can attract attention and drive actions, but you need to pay attention to more than just the words you write.
Here are some things to keep in mind and apply to your social media content strategy.
- Know audience. A quick and easy way to get more familiar with your audience is to ask them questions. Learn what information is important to them or what gets them to engage and to act. Some social network insights provide demographics, and even psychographics, such as their online shopping habits.
- Know goals. Determine in advance what you’re trying to get out of social media marketing. Be realistic. You could start with brand awareness, offer customer service, and supplement your traditional advertising and sales efforts.
- Be clear on your CTAs. Once you establish your business goals, come up with straightforward actions that your audience can take to help you achieve those goals. If you are looking to increase brand awareness, compelling people to comment on and share your posts can help increase visibility. If you’re offering customer service through social media, give people a seamless way to contact you and a clear expectation on how quickly you’re able to response. Make sure the links you use lead to a destination where someone can take immediate action.
- Establish your brand voice. Knowing your audience can help you set the right tone in your messaging; however, you also need to establish and stick to your brand’s image and "personality."
- Determine your key social networks. While it is tempting to be everywhere at once, knowing your audience and goals can help you determine the social networks that are best for your company.
- Establish your posting frequency. While there are reports available that tell you the optimate days and times to post on each social network, paying attention to the stats provided through the insights on the networks you use is a better place to start. Pay attention to when your audience is paying attention.
- Develop a social media calendar. Once you know your posting frequency and key events that warrant promotion, a social media calendar can help you stay on message. While there are many opportunities to post "on-the-fly" including at events or the moment something newsworthy happens, planning out regular posts keeps your messaging aligned with your goals.
- Define your base content. As you fill up your social media calendar, include a mix of timely or time-sensitive posts and repeatable ones. Some things you can post about include events, company news, behind-the-scenes glimpses, employee features, product demos, and customer testimonials. Remember to repeat key messages intermittently.
- Vary up your content types. Keep things interesting in your social media feed by switching up the type of content you’re posting including photographs, graphics, animations, and videos.
- Use multiple visuals. When posting photographs or graphics, increase engagement through carousels on Instagram or albums on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or Threads. These create more visual interest and the opportunity for people to click through to view everything.
- Try new types of content. If you haven’t posted Stories, you are missing out on a popular type of content that works on Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Short videos are another content format that works on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and even YouTube. You can also try live streaming video on the same social networks.
- Pay attention to competitors. While you don’t want to copy your competitors, take a look at what they are doing and what seems to be working for them. Use that information as inspiration. You can also research the reverse: what is your competition doing that misses the mark and what can you learn from that?
- Pay attention to trends. Not every trend will be on-brand for you but look at what is trending and being replicated by your competitors and influencers. This could be certain music or sounds, a specific photo or video style, or even a meme. Find ways to tap into the wave without compromising your brand’s reputation.
- Ask more questions. While asking a question in a post caption might generate some engagement, using a social media poll feature or survey tool can give you greater insights into your audiences’ needs and interests.
- Use keywords. Like any searchable content, social media post captions should contain keywords that will make it easy for your content to be found.
- Add hashtags and emoji. Using hashtags sparingly and strategically can emphasize and augment the keywords in your posts, adding your content into search results. Adding emoji in appropriate ways adds visual interest to your content and can help express emotion or enhance your message.
- Follow relevant accounts. Don’t post to social networks in a vacuum. Follow the accounts of your vendors, partners, local and national organizations, trusted news sources, and other sources for information and inspiration.
- Leverage other people’s content. Add to your own content by sharing posts from partners and trusted sources. Ask for and repurpose content from your customers, with permission. Partner with and pay influencers to promote your content or generate custom content for you that reaches their audience for greater exposure.
- Mentions and Collabs. Attract more attention by mentioning others in your posts, whether partners or other collaborators. Give kudos or credit to others through mentions. Join forces with other companies or organizations by doing joint or collaborative posts.
- Utilize AI. Don’t shy away from taking advantage of the new AI-powered tools, particularly to help you with social media content development, from your text captions to visuals for your posts. Always double check the results and pay attention to copyright issues.
As you can see, there are many things to think about as you develop social media content. The more you pay attention to the details and employ best practices; the more value you’ll get out of the content you produce and post.
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Aliza Sherman is a web pioneer, author, and international speaker. Sherman is the author of 8 books about the Internet including The Everything Blogging Book, Streetwise Ecommerce, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Crowdsourcing and Social Media Engagement for Dummies.