What content should I post on my social media?

The age old question for small businesses, marketeers and social media content creators: what content should I post on my social media?

For a lot of business starting out on social media it can be really difficult to know what to say on your channels, which channel to choose, how often to post on social, what time is best... the list goes on!

To help you create the best content to post on your social media channels, you need to do these 6 things:

1. Define your objectives

2. Outline your audience

3. Choose the right platform

4. Stand out from the crowd

5. Be yourself and show your personality

6. Treat your followers like a community

Defining your objectives for social media

When looking at investing time (and money) into social media, it is useful to have purpose and direction. If you are a small start up, you can use social media to increase your reach, engagement and ultimately create a following that can support your business.

Defining success and your objectives will help give direction to everything you post and are important to keep in mind throughout your journey through growing your social media community.

Set SMART goals and stick to them, if they are not working, ask why and adapt your approach to achieve them. For example, one SMART goal may be to Increase the number of leads generated through instagram from 10 to 20 per month over the next three months. This will help give purpose to your posts, stories, articles, links or any other content type.

Outline your audience

Defining and evaluating your ideal audience is such an essential task for ANY business, large or small. You need to create content that THEY will engage with, that THEY will love and that THEY can relate to or find value from.

Once you have researched your audience properly you can see what content they engage with the most, which channel they prefer, what content works with them already and you can use this to create a hybrid of the best and most engaging content for your audience, using what they currently like and engage with the most.

Outlining your audience is not only useful in social media, you can use this to define your channel, messaging and branding too!

Choose the right platform

Choosing the right social media platform to share your content is almost as important as the content itself. There are so many different platforms available for businesses nowadays: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and more!

Now if you've done your audience research properly, you will know which platform your audience prefers. If they are on there, you should be too!

Of course the nature of your business will affect which platform you choose but as a general rule, try and stick to platforms that you can effectively manage with your resource. If you are a small team with limited time daily for marketing, trying to manage 4+ social media accounts may stretch resources too thin. Stick to one or two main channels and focus on them

Stand out from the crowd

Let your audience know its you by standing out from your competitors. Keep consistent branding and messaging while being creative with how you use your social media channels.

Set out brand guidelines that include imagery, filters, logo placement, as well as tone of voice, messaging and caption construction and stick to these guidelines throughout all posting and channels.

Try and be as creative as you can whilst using these guidelines too. Mix up your media and be different!

Be yourself and show your personality

Social media can often be an insight into how a company works and operates whilst showcasing the employees and personalities.

Followers often interact more with your page or profile (especially smaller businesses) if your personality shines through. Research has shown that images with a face gets up to 70% more engagement so imagine the engagement you'll get with YOUR face being shown.

I am however, well aware of how daunting that is. And if i'm honest i'm not that great at showing my face on social media. But research has shown this is what works, and anytime I have done in the past, it has payed dividends.

Treat your followers like a community

It's really easy to see social media as numbers. Getting a high number of interactions with other profiles really takes the personality out of social media. But It is really important to note that your followers are people. People who are so interested in your page that they have subscribed to your page to see regular updates on their own feed.

Use this and treat every one of your followers as a member of your community. I talked in another recent blog about the 100 True Fans theory. If you can treat every follower like a true fan, they are more likely to use your services or buy your products when they are ready to.

Interact with them like they are people, ask and respond to questions honestly, treat them well and they will in turn treat you well (by liking, sharing and commenting of course!).

Create content that encourages your community and try not to push all your products and services down their throats. Content that is honest will really work!

Conclusion

Social media is a minefield especially for small businesses. Knowing what to post and what to focus on is really important for the organic growth of your channels.

Set clear goals, define your audience and choose the right channel before you get started then really try hard to create content that resonates, provides value, creates community, is honest and shows your personality to really make waves with your social media.

As always if you need any help with your social media, get in touch.