How to Create Social Media Content That Helps You Reach Your Goals

Social media is one of the best things that could happen to the world of marketing because it keeps businesses in touch with their audiences. But there’s a secret – it only works if you know how to create engaging and relatable content.

Plus, the content you publish will be different depending on what you’re trying to achieve. So, to be successful, you have to adapt the content strategy to fit your goals. Here are a few ways to do this:

Analyze Your Current Social Media Presence

Whether you’re trying to grow a personal brand or a business, the way you set your goals matters. So make sure you have clearly-defined goals that are both realistic and time-defined before even thinking about your social media strategy.

If you’re already set with the list of goals, the next step is a social media audit to understand your current situation.

Many businesses tend to adjust their social media strategy to what they think the audience would like to see/hear. However, this is not a data-driven, goal-oriented strategy, which is why the results are often lacking.

Overall, this step should give you an idea of your progress so far (if there is any) and an opportunity to identify weak spots in your social media planning.

Define Your Content Strategy

Believe it or not, good content (on social media or not) is built on a solid strategy that follows a set of well-defined goals. Given that this is a hierarchical structure, it’s easy to see how, if you start from the middle, your content won’t have any legs to stand on.

A successful social media strategy focuses on several elements such as topics of interest, types of content (text, video, visual, combinations), frequency of posting, communication channels, and more.

However, to be truly successful, you have to start by researching both your target audience and your competitors. This will give you a different perspective on what works and why, allowing you to create a data-driven strategy.

Also, it’s important to leave room for changes on the go since nothing is set in stone when it comes to online content.

Come Up With Content Pillars as Part of Your Content Strategy

In the world of social media, trends come and go in the blink of an eye. However, brands use trends to increase their audience all the time. So how do you build a content strategy but stay flexible enough to react to trends on time?

The secret stands on your social media content pillars. These are the leading guidelines that tell you the type of content and topics you can explore to stay relevant to your audience.

For instance, a sports clothing brand will have fashion as one of its pillars, but they’ll also write about sports, health, and having an active lifestyle.

Your pillars are the main topics of interest for your audience. By following them, you’ll also be up to date with any upcoming trends so you’ll know they will be relevant for your own content strategy.

Focus on User Experience

On social media you can’t have a one-sided conversation where you constantly feed content to your followers and expect them to mingle amongst themselves. Users that engage with your content expect a thoughtful and personalized answer to their comments and mentions.

You need to be responsive (reply asap) and engaged with your community. Plus, practice recognition and gratitude for every retweet, like, or share you receive.

You don’t have to reach out to everyone who likes your posts, but it’s a good idea to give a shoutout to anyone who supports your efforts as a collective “thank you” from time to time.

Key Takeaways

You need a solid social media content strategy based on clearly-defined goals in order to increase your presence and boost sales. But you also need to pay attention to your followers’ opinions and acknowledge their participation, to make them feel seen and understood.

Overall, social media is more like a conversation – you need to know what point you’re trying to make, but you shouldn’t ignore other participants.