How to create social media content

Written by Ryan on Wed Dec 08 2021

  • Social Media
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It feels that almost daily we hear how all brands need to be on social media.

“If you’re not on TikTok or Instagram Reels, your small business will never succeed.”

It IS an easy way to communicate with potential customers, grow your brand, generate leads, and much more - but no one really tells you where, or how to start.

Being present is great, so we’d always encourage you to start posting as soon as you can with the content you have. But the only thing worse than having no social footprint is having one that’s poor quality which doesn’t reflect you, or your brand.

Often businesses don’t know what to post on social media to showcase their business, so they resort to low-quality stock images, generic posts, and ramming products down people’s throats. 

Here’s a breakdown of things to remember when creating your content plan:

Think Like a Human

The first and most important thing to remember is you need to approach social media as a human and not a sales robot. We all use social media so it’s not hard to put yourself in your demographic’s shoes, just think who do you follow on social media and why do you follow them?

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Do you follow those who constantly promote their brand and shove promotions in your face? Or do you follow people whose content you enjoy? Content that makes you laugh, or educates you, or makes you feel something.

You won’t succeed on social media by thinking how you can take from your followers, you need to identify what they want to see, tie it into your company and then create content that will add value to their feeds.

Do Your Homework

The best way to get a better understanding of the current landscape is to take time to find out what type of content is already out there. Investigate your industry, not just businesses but publications. No matter your industry we can guarantee you there will be online magazines with articles and content about your industry. Never plagiarise the content, but use these platforms to gain an understanding of what people are talking about, what they are interested in, and what they want to see.

Google Trends showing the searches for the phrase "Instagram Tips" vs "LinkedIn Tips" over the last month.

Google trends can be used to see how many people are searching for a certain word or phrase. When you are creating content, you can use the google trends search to see how many people are interested in a certain topic, this will ensure you are creating content on things people want to see. There are so many different tools out there now that allow you to see what’s working for your industry - so get looking. The likes of Brandwatch, You Scan, Buzzsumo and others will all help you build an idea of what is, and isn’t working.

Get Specific

The wider your net, the less you’ll catch. Trying to reach and please everyone with a single post is nearly impossible, so you need to design each post with a particular type of customer in mind.

B2B and B2C customers are naturally going to be interested in different things so not every post can cater to both bases. For B2B get technical, show off your machinery, your process, the background details.

For B2C think about their needs and what they are interested in. The one thing you always need to address for both is how you can add value to them.

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Take DHL for example. The delivery company showcase their drivers and community initiatives on their Instagram to target customers while reserving their LinkedIn to discuss the business side of their company.

Invest In Content 

Posting content is the first step but at a certain point, the quality of your content is going to come into question. How are people supposed to trust your attention to detail and the quality of your product if you have a watermarked fuzzy image promoting your brand?

Take Canva for example - Canva is a free graphic design platform that's great for creating social media posts. A drag and drop system allows you to customize thousands of templates. Canva's wide range of features allows you to edit photos without knowledge or experience.

If you haven’t got the time to do this yourself because your business is so busy, then don’t be afraid to get some help. You aren’t expected to know everything, and there are people out there that can do it better.

Track It

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It doesn’t matter how much research you do or how much time you put into your content if you aren’t monitoring how well it is performing. If it isn’t increasing engagement, following, translating to sales etc - then it is pretty worthless. We’re all for building brand awareness with your posts, but if only one person is engaging - there’s no awareness there.

By tracking each metric, you are in a position to understand what type of content is working and what is not, ensuring that you aren’t wasting your time on something that is giving you no return. 

We know how hard it can be to get all of these things in place, start by being realistic - what can you start doing first that won’t take you away from running the business?

If you’re not sure where to begin, let us help you get that ball rolling. Check out our recent articles on different social strategies, and head over to our Instagram for more tips and tricks. 

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