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Social media has evolved. What started as a great way to keep up with your friends and family is also now a way to connect with consumers looking for trustworthy brands and new products to purchase.
Many brands are cashing in on social media's popularity among consumers by creating and posting content that influences their purchasing decisions. Chances are you are too.
The thing is, social media moves fast. Trends and best practices evolve daily. You may have noticed your social content becoming stale or engagement slowly dropping. The key is to move just as fast as social when it comes to improving your content. Luckily, we have some knowledge to share.
In this guide, we'll guide you through the best practices you need to create content that inspires your audience and converts followers into customers.
Table of Contents
Improving the quality of your social content means ensuring the content you publish is more insightful and impactful than the hundreds of posts your competitors publish daily.
It means ensuring the social content connects with your target audience and inspires them to engage. In other words, quality social media content delivers true value to those who consume it, whether it's a text-based post, video, or photo.
If you're ready to improve the quality of your social media content, there are a few best practices to follow. Let's dive right in.
The first step in reaching social media success is to focus on building relationships and community above all else. Social media marketing is a two-way street: while you can talk to your audience through content, if your audience isn't engaging and talking back, the rest of your tactics won't work.
How do you build a relationship with your followers? Engage! Ask your audience questions. Share the content they create about your brand (such as product reviews or testimonials) on your feed. And when your audience responds to your content, be sure to respond back.
Another way to build community is by creating content tailored to your audience. Pay attention to the content your followers engage with the most and then create more of it.
According to HubSpot, 82% of brands use content marketing. However, according to Semrush, 39% of brands say their content marketing efforts are only somewhat successful.
One reason for the lack of success is failing to assess current content to see what's working and what isn't. Many brands continuously create content that doesn't perform simply because they haven't dug into its performance.
Before you create new content, check your performance metrics to see what your audience is engaging with. Identifying successful content will help you pinpoint what you should create in the future.
The assessment will also reveal your social media platforms with the most audience engagement. For example, if your Instagram gets more engagement and generates more leads, you should prioritize creating more Instagram content.
You can also use insights gathered from your successful content to improve your underperforming content. If you start social media content creation without assessing your existing content, you could repeat content mistakes and keep receiving subpar results.
Another tip for successful social media content development is setting goals. Your goals are the objectives you hope to achieve by creating and publishing social media content. Depending on your company, some of your goals may include boosting:
Setting clearly defined goals will enable you to create content best suited for achieving those goals.
For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, reputation, and sales, you can post user-generated content, such as positive customer reviews on social media. According to a BrightLocal survey, 73% of customers trust a business more when they see positive reviews.
Goal setting is most effective when you have SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals. Specific and well-defined goals provide your company with something to aim for and reduce your chances of getting sidetracked or wasting resources on unnecessary activities.
Measurable goals allow you to monitor and assess content and marketing performance. If your goals are not measurable, it will be harder to tell if your content marketing is working or failing. Making your goals achievable is also crucial because if they are unachievable or unrealistic, success will be elusive, regardless of how hard you try.
Lastly, goals should be relevant and time-bound. Irrelevant goals will contribute nothing to your company's success, and time-bound goals can help you focus and prioritize tasks.
A social media content calendar is a schedule that shows all the content you intend to publish within a specific time frame (a week, a month, or a year).
Using a calendar for social media content creation is essential because it will help you stay organized and prevent missed deadlines.
The calendar can also help you publish content with the right cadence, helping you post as frequently as needed to keep your target audience engaged. Social media content calendars are most effective when they have these elements:
You can find social media content calendar templates online or build one from scratch with Excel.
Ideating and creating fresh and engaging content for social media can be daunting, especially if you choose to post daily. Fortunately, you can reduce your workload by assigning the job to someone else.
However, you can’t assign your social media content creation to just anyone. Go for an expert who understands your brand voice, target audience, and content marketing goals.
At Cohley, we simplify finding the best content creators by connecting brands with qualified professionals who can deliver visual assets that drive growth. Whether you need ad-ready video content for TikTok ads or professional photography for Instagram, we can connect you with a creator that will give you an edge over your competitors.
Behind every successful social media content development process is content testing. Testing will verify if a content asset can get the results you want by checking if target audiences can easily find and understand your content.
Testing will also measure how much your audience enjoys your content and how valuable they find it. If your content checks all the right boxes, it has a better chance of convincing viewers to take your desired actions.
At Cohley, we help clients save money and achieve content marketing goals faster through continuous content testing and optimization. Our proven procedures and tech can test content performance on various social media platforms. We then use insights from the tests to improve the content to reach, engage, and convert more of the right people.
Putting out great content and forgetting about it won’t help you stand out on social media. If you really want to stand out, you need to engage with your customers. You can do this by replying to your audience in the comments or asking customers for reviews.
Customers are eager to provide reviews because it makes them feel heard, and more customers prefer doing business with brands that listen to them. Besides helping you engage customers, requesting reviews can significantly increase your sales, brand loyalty, and trustworthiness.
How? Positive customer reviews convince consumers to patronize you because they expect to have the same positive experience detailed in the positive reviews. According to data gathered by Grin, 85% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.
To make sure more prospects see your positive customer reviews, turn them into user-generated content and publish them on social media.
One of the best tips we can provide is this: create good content that you can publish on all your social media platforms. The content should be easy to modify so you can post it on any social media channel, from TikTok to Facebook.
For instance, you can repurpose a short video to display on almost any platform, including the top six – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
However, before posting your multipurpose content on different social media platforms, personalize it to fit your target audience on each platform. Personalizing social media posts requires studying and understanding your target audience and tailoring content to match their preferences and needs.
If you can create such posts, you'll have a better chance of connecting with your target audience and converting and retaining prospects.
This best practice goes hand-in-hand with the above. You'll want to make sure that any content you create, regardless of channel, is consistent with your brand. This will ensure your brand is easily recognizable across platforms which builds trust with your audience.
How do you maintain brand consistency? Start by creating clear brand guidelines. These guidelines should include your brand colors, logo usage, image guidelines, your unique brand voice, and other brand-specific information.