Archives for February 2017

One of the types of content that you need to create in your content marketing endeavors is social media content. Social media content is any content that you will use for purposes of promoting on social media. It might be a blurb that goes with a link to a video or blog post, or it might be an infographic or meme to help you get a point or two across. Creating content for social media is an important part of every business’s marketing strategy.

* Plan Ahead – Most people seem to totally forget to plan ahead regarding social media content. This is a mistake. If you create a blog post, for example, then you should create a tweet, a Facebook post, and other blurbs for whatever social media network that you plan to share the information on. I use PromoRepublic as one source of ideas, then post ideas on my calendar.

* Add the Content to Your Calendar – Include social media content on your editorial calendar. If you know that in August you’re going to promote a great new product or service, then you should also be planning for social media content to use in that promotion — both leading up to the launch and during the launch.

* Create Images for Social Media – Remember that images are a form of content, and that you need to create images for social media sharing. Images are more likely to be shared than text and are an important part of your marketing actions on social media. Using a variety of images as content, like infographics and memes, will increase shares and engagement. For images you can use for free (personal and commercial), I use Pixabay.com. If they don’t have what I’m looking for, I use a stock photo site such as DepositPhotos.com. Please be very careful not to use any image without explicit permission. If you copy and paste an image from another website, it could end up costing you thousands of dollars in legal fees. There are unscrupulous lawyers that make a living suing bloggers and small business people for unauthorized use of photos/images.

* Outsource It – You can use your content calendar to get help creating social media content with experts. These experts can help you create infographics, memes and a with a copywriting expert they can also help you craft just the right words to use for a blurb supporting your other promotions, products and services.  I have an awesome virtual assistant that I found on Upwork.com. She does a great job and gives me tremendous peace of mind.

* Share More Than Once – It’s important that you promote the content that you create and that you do it more than once. People do not check their entire social media stream, so sharing the same content with new blurbs and a new spin on the information several times will increase the view rate exponentially. This is something I’m working on. I am sharing on Twitter and Facebook pretty regularly, not so often on LinkedIn, and I rarely reshare content.

* Conduct A/B Testing – Also called split testing, you want to see what times, headlines, and topics get more attention than others. As you collect this data, you’ll soon know exactly what time is best to share any updates with your social media followers. This is something I am reading more and more about but honestly haven’t been doing that much of. Perhaps when I have more time or get more sophisticated in my testing.

* Target Each Audience – Each social media network has its own personality, and the portion of your audience that follows you and engages with you on each network is usually slightly different. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that the content you create is right for that network.

* Create Content Often – With social media you need to have content for most days of the week, and share it more than once per day. This can seem like a lot of content to create, but it all stems from the basic message you want to get across to your audience based on your promotions. I was inspired to post more by Grant Cardone, the sales trainer and author who wrote The 10X Rule. He’s a social media machine, posting a dozen times a day or more. I don’t feel like going there, but I did realize I needed to step it up.

Creating content for social media will be a large part of your content creation program. It will help ensure that the products, services and information that you need to communicate to your audience gets the attention it needs. While you’re busy creating all of this content, be sure to listen to your audience and see what they’re saying. Are they asking questions you can answer? Is there confusion in your market you can help to clarify? More good reasons to post!