Social media has taken marketing to a new level in the last decade. The content you publish on social media can make your brand known and gradually make your followers real fans.
But to become a social media content creator and grow your business with it, you need more than just posting whatever and whenever you like. To become popular on social media, you need to set specific goals, write helpful posts that align with those goals, and consistently distribute content on specific platforms. Then you can evaluate the results and adjust your strategy over time.
The central myth associated with social media marketing (SMM) concerns the misconception that everything seems pretty straightforward. But behind the ostensible simplicity, there is a lot of work, especially if social media content creator has to communicate on several social networks simultaneously.
Updating profiles, engaging with audiences, generating new content daily, aligning with company policies and internal experts, communicating with opinion leaders, attracting followers, and maintaining consistent brand communication at every interaction point – all of this needs to be tied together in a cohesive scheme.
Having a well-developed content strategy for social media means that the time and resources a social media content creator puts into it will be used wisely. There is no general content strategy that guarantees success on social media. Your niche and audience determine your strategy. However, there are certain steps a social media content creator should take to develop a plan that will help your brand and business grow.
Let’s find out what it takes to create a competent social media promotion strategy and how to become a great social media content creator.
Before you start any activity, you need to ask what you want to end up with.
When setting a goal, there’s an important point to remember. Not all platforms are built for sales. It’s like when you meet someone passionate about their business and gibbering on and on about it. You listen to him for one or two hours and don’t come to the next meeting.
In the case of social media sales (we are not talking about specialized tools like targeted advertising), excessive commercial activity is perceived even worse. And every salesperson, even if they believe in their product and are willing to talk about it for hours, is seen as a time stealer.
Therefore, social networks are not a sales tool but a space for educating the audience, building relationships, collaborating with subscribers, demonstrating expertise, and an opportunity to share benefits through content. It’s a long game, not a quick sell.
For goal-setting, I recommend the old and proven SMART methodology. SMART allows you to summarize all the available information at the goal-setting stage, set an acceptable deadline, determine the necessary resources, and provide clear, precise, specific objectives to all participants in the process
SMART is an abbreviation of the goal criteria.
For example, your business goal is brand growth. Then the corresponding social media goal would be growth in brand awareness. And the metric that will measure this could be growth in subscribers, reposts, etc.
Or you want to make customers more loyal. In social media, you need to increase engagement with metrics that measure growth in comments, likes, etc.
All goals need to be checked by SMART.
Let’s recall the golden rule of content marketing – Know Your Audience. At the center of SMM strategy is your customer, which means you need to find out exactly who your audience is, where and how these people spend their time, and what content they want to see in their feeds.
Before you start, spend some time creating accurate images of your audience (personas). The better you know your target audience, the easier it will be to create the content they want to see.
Examine existing data
Look at your customers’ profiles and current subscribers on social media and newsletters – what else do you have out there?
Use Google Analytics to find out:
Collect slices of socio-demographic information about your audience:
If there are differences between platforms in this data, note them.
Explore current topics
Paid tools like BuzzSumo, SEMrush, and Ahrefs Content Explorer, or free tools like Google Trends, can help identify relevant topics, popular queries, and the most effective content in your niche.
The next step is to assess the competitive environment. It is necessary to achieve the following objectives:
Try keyword and phrase analysis to research companies competing with you in search engines. First, determine the main keyword queries your potential client may use (you can do this manually or with platforms like Serpstat) and enter them into a search engine.
The first page of your search results will reveal your closest competitors. Then, a study of their websites and social networks will tell you what content they distribute, who their audience is in social networks, and what competitors use to attract attention: this will help you create an SMM strategy that is no worse than the most successful competitors.
Another way to analyze your competitors is to survey your customers and suppliers. Ask them whose social media posts they follow, who they like and why, and who they consider to be your main competitors.
Find out what made customers turn to you: what makes you different from your competitors, and on what terms your “colleagues” offered to cooperate with your customers and suppliers.
You can use Twitter Analytics, Instagram Insights, and Facebook Audience Insights to track similar accounts followed by people who subscribe to your account. You don’t need to research all of your competitors. A list of the top 5-10 in your business is enough.
As part of your analysis, you need to look at all the competitors’ social networks.
Analyze them according to the following points:
It is possible to analyze the data on the above parameters, but it will take a lot of time. We recommend using different tools for social media analysis.
There are a lot of them. Here is just a small list:
When choosing a tool, focus on the features you need. You can find tools that specialize in analyzing just Instagram or Twitter if you need a more in-depth analysis of a competitor’s main platform.
The ideal option for engaging with a brand’s audience is for the company to be active on all platforms where its audience or potential customers might be.
But practice shows that this is difficult for most social media content creators (except for large brands). Effective marketing on one social network is sometimes a difficult task, and here you need to create and promote quality content on several channels at once.
In that case, instead of being present on all possible platforms, it is better to choose a few key ones but do everything there nicely and correctly.
When choosing, focus on the channels that will give your business the best results. It depends on what resources a social media content creator has, what platforms your competitors use, and what platforms your audience uses most often.
What makes people follow a brand’s social media?
The top reasons, according to SproutSocial research, are:
Think about where people will find information about your new products or specials.
For example, if you’re advertising a pre-Christmas gift sale, Instagram is your best choice – you can showcase goods, photos, and videos, plus this network has a massive audience for these products.
If you want to explain how to use a gadget or platform, a YouTube tutorial or screencast will work best.
The next thing you need to do is determine what content would be optimal for your audience in the context of the platform and where customers are in the buying process.
A few essential questions:
How can you find out for sure? Invite sales managers, talk to customer service, or ask them what complaints they hear.
You can ask current customers this question and poll subscribers.
User-generated content plays an essential role in community building and engagement.
If done right, it looks more authentic than branded content and inspires more trust.
Some brands enlist the help of influencers or brand ambassadors to encourage audiences to participate in contests, giveaways, or hashtag competitions.
Save time by reworking your source material. This doesn’t mean you have to publish the same thing on all platforms (never do that). But think about how you can reuse one piece of content for different purposes.
For example, a blog post can be used as source material for a YouTube video, broken up into smaller stories in TikTok or stories for Instagram, and converted into infographics that can then be published on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.
YouTube videos can be “sliced” into shorter clips and posted to Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook, either as ads or in regular format.
Industry reports, survey data, and case studies can be used to create infographics that show your findings in a visually appealing format.
Webinars can be reused to demonstrate products in action, educate your audience, or encourage future subscribers to attend. You can turn your recording into a SlideShare presentation, share key findings on Twitter, or turn webinar topics into lengthy blog articles.
Content adaptation is a great option to streamline your content department. Don’t neglect this opportunity.
Everyone in the company can be a social media content creator. To do this, you need to seek out experts within the company who can bring a unique perspective to communicate with customers.
These can be:
After determining what and how you will use to develop your own content, you can finally begin to develop a promotion strategy.
While working on brand promotion, determine the following points:
After that, you can organize the work on the content fully.
Make sure you have enough resources to work on your content.
Check if you have the resources you need to create quality content quickly. Develop a team collaboration plan.
Essential things to keep in mind:
You need to track how effective your chosen strategy is.
Set accurate marketing goals. You need to track KPIs over the long term and adjust them as needed. The metrics you track should answer a specific question – such as how the number of subscribers is changing.
You may also want to track likes and reposts – this will help you understand how active your audience is. If the numbers you select are low, you can adjust the content.
Here are 15 excellent writing skills you need to master to become a social media content creator.
Even if you know what to write about in your next post or how to present a product or brand, there is always room for inspiration.
The art of observation is the first important habit to master.
This skill will help you master a wealth of information and effectively manage your thoughts.
This skill is among the most in-demand in the 21st century. It is vital for copywriters, social media content creators, and other types of writers who need to market services and products to the global online marketplace.
A story brings meaning to your text, no matter what you’re writing about.
A story is not a dry passage from point to point. An author can reveal personal experiences in a story and walk the reader through life patterns.
It doesn’t matter what your brand, project, or service is about because audiences are more interested in personality than global achievements or high quality.
That’s why you can’t buy readers’ or potential customers’ attention with numbers. Today, the central role of content is the unique story the writer shares with you.
Time is a primary tool that must be used correctly to be a successful social media content creator.
Imagine that you have two hours to develop a project on a topic you know and the same amount of time on a subject you are unfamiliar with. Really, more time is needed.
Even if you come up with a great idea, you can’t develop it without solid research or tools like Clearscope or Frase.
Being responsible about how you spend your time is an essential skill for both experienced and novice social media content creators.
Don’t underestimate the urgency of a project – sometimes, a non-urgent task becomes overwhelming once you start developing it.
Try to organize your writing process efficiently to stay productive and allocate your time correctly. Special mobile app tools that help you plan your time and concentrate on writing accurately.
Plan the content of your article in advance if you want to make it even better later. Usually, every piece of literature has an introduction, the main body, and a conclusion.
Additional components such as exposition, build-up, climax, decline, and denouement will automatically be woven into your text if you know your literary principles well.
Always try to engage your audience with a sincere message at the beginning of your text.
It would be best if you kept your audience engaged, whether it’s an article, blog post, or other types of online content.
Create paragraphs with topic sentences for each part of your text, and make sure they stick to a logical structure.
This will help you understand what each piece should talk about and clearly explain your topic. Then, get the message across by using a concise and reliable chain of events and conclusions in your work.
It’s easier to be a successful social media content creator with fully developed writing skills. Get into the habit of writing daily, and you’ll see your skills improve.
You can also set yourself a goal of writing the required number of words on your chosen topic every day.
This will help you beat writer’s block and expand your writing horizons.
Don’t just focus on your content – practice your writing skills on your own.
Create a writing calendar and identify a daily topic or topic sentence you want to write about. Write down what topic you will stick to, and you will have a monthly writing schedule in front of you.
Don’t be too hard on your practice results, especially when you need to overcome writer’s block.
The drafts you create during your first month of daily writing sessions can be a great way to develop your literary talent and create outstanding content.
Receiving and accepting opinions about your work is one of the most valuable skills a social media content creator can acquire. Accepting criticism and feedback will help you grow beyond that.
However, you can edit your work yourself; a great practice is to ask someone to give an independent opinion of your work.
All content goes through several stages of editing before publication. And your job as a social media content creator is to stick to the writing guidelines and follow all the guidelines for improving any text you’re working on.
Take the editing process seriously and pay attention to every detail. Make your text a bastion of honed grammar, excellent, consistent delivery, and clarity.
Break up more lengthy content into parts and see where it lacks information and where it’s over-abundant.
Use simpler sentence structures and clear definitions for reader comfort. The sooner you get used to the editing process, the more quality content you’ll create in your first drafts.
It’s no secret that social media content creators tend to have similar themes over and over again. Try refreshing your brain with non-writing activities.
Anything can be helpful: walking, art therapy, fitness, reading a book, watching great movies, listening to or playing your favorite music, and other hobbies.
Organize a mini-vacation to free yourself from intrusive thoughts and see the world from a new perspective.
Revitalize your thoughts with hands-on, relaxing activities. Working with yourself is just as crucial for content writing as observation or storytelling.
Adjusting to ground zero is a rest for your mind. In addition, try to change your writing style and write in other genres.
Creating new neural connections is essential for every social media content creator. It helps you rearrange different thoughts and ideas and put even the most complex picture together out of puzzles.
Any field you write about involves an individual approach. Develop your knowledge of any topic you need to write about. Most writers are not certified experts in the areas they write about. There is still time to read books on subjects you dreamed of in high school.
Search engine algorithms are looking for great content, and you’ll need to research it and do a lot of work and keyword research to get more done.
By becoming a versatile writer, you’ll expand your options in the content market step by step and simplify almost every task to a minimum of effort.
That doesn’t mean you don’t have to do in-depth research on every topic, but knowing a broad range of issues will make your writing more compelling.
Digital marketers and online entrepreneurs need to be aware of the different types of web content. In general, web content is divided into four types:
There are also several types of content writing:
Try not to focus only on the articles. Different types of context will grab your readers’ attention and help keep them engaged for longer.
You must focus not only on the writing process but also on the main topic of your text. One of the most challenging skills to develop for a social media context creator is the focus. It can play a central role in any type of content you work on. Make the idea the golden thread that ties together the various elements of your story.
However, try not to repeat the same facts multiple times in the text. When readers understand something, they want to learn something new.
Hence, an exchange of valuable information is necessary from the introduction to the last sentence of the final paragraph.
Writing content for the online marketplace requires the highest level of creativity and reliable knowledge. You can use two winning strategies when writing on a particular topic:
Use links to back up your message and present relevant data for your content.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to keep content interesting. You need to learn how to incorporate exciting facts from related disciplines into your topic. Constantly improving your skills will help keep you inspired.
As a social media content creator, you should always have something to write down ideas. It’s a good idea to write them down in one place so they’re easier to find later.
Out-of-the-box thinking is something every social media content creator needs, and brainstorming is the best training. If you don’t think your first idea is a good one, it’s probably not a mistake. Try a few ideas before you stick to one story. The last and improved ones can make an excellent basis for your first draft.
Brainstorming is often mistakenly thought of as a great idea-generation process, but the opposite is true.
Avoid developing great ideas and start with the worst ones. The main purpose of this method is to extract the rest of your writer’s block and make you bolder in your content writing.
Familiarity with what others write will help you identify your own strengths and weaknesses. Try to read books and articles carefully: have a special notebook or online tool where you will write down memorable quotes, important ideas, and answers to popular questions.
Keep in mind the main points of the content creation process: keep the idea unique and stick to the recommended length.
When it comes to a short message, you need to be concise to convey the whole story with the right pitch.
Otherwise, when you’re working on an extended text, you may go into more detail.
Either way, don’t underestimate your potential to become a better social media content creator.
Take small daily steps and see how amazingly good your results are. Track your progress, study, and learn, and you will grow both as a writer and as a person.
Working effectively with social media is a complex process. You need to collect data about the company’s audience, analyze it, and track competitors’ performance, current topics, and brand mentions.
You also need to build collaboration with influencers, brand ambassadors, and internal experts.
The steps outlined above will help you create a strategy and content plan, create posts and achieve the right goals.
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