Do you know that marketing and strategy experts are pegging social media to be as big search engines in the not so distant future? It’s true. It is also the reason why so many businesses are trying to get their businesses recognised on social media. While the vast majority of businesses are focusing on only one social media platform at a time, the really foresighted ones are trying to leverage a number of them through an integrated strategy. The reason why so few businesses utilise all social media platforms is that they don’t have enough content to engage their audiences.
And, the reason why they don’t have enough content is a combination of lack of awareness about different types of social media content and shortage of sufficient funds. The most ironic bit, however, is that alleviating the first part of the problem actually eliminates the second problem as well. Don’t believe us? Go through this list of six types of social media content and then tell us that you can’t find a solution to your funding problems.
Create and Link Out To Your Own Content
This is easily the most obvious path to content marketing on social media platforms for most small business owners. Why it is the most obvious path is that the unique content can be used for a wide variety of purposes including search engine optimisation and direct marketing. Moreover, it is also the most effective method because it establishes content authority and creates an impression of expertise in the eyes of the audience.
However, even the organisations with unlimited pockets don’t rely solely on sharing self-created content. The reason is a term known as attention fatigue. The average Joe requires variety, especially in today’s age of information overload. The page that provides maximum information, entertainment, and engagement will get the most audience. Therefore, a page only offering self-created content will either be swamped under competition or be left behind its competitors because creating content is resource intensive.
In simple terms, creating your own content needs to be a part of your overall social media engagement strategy as opposed to the sole component to engage audiences better and take the load off your own resources.
Curate Third Party Content
Unless you’re some kind of a revolutionary, and let’s admit most of us aren’t, the chances of your industry already having an established expert are high. However, don’t let that discourage you because there’s room for more than one big fish in the big ocean. In fact, you need those other experts because you can share their high-quality content too.
There’s nothing wrong with sharing someone else’s content with your audience, unless that someone else is your direct competitor. In fact, audiences will take you more seriously if you do because they’ll see that you’re more concerned about their well-being than the well-being of your own bottom line.
Additionally, sharing other experts’ content will also help you establish a good rapport with influencers in your own industry. This can come in handy at later stages of your fledgeling business when you’re looking to scale up or expand through collaboration, syndication, or even diversification.
Come Up With Unique Value Proposition
There’s this old saying in the world that will be relevant up until we change the global economic system: “money talks”. This little idiom doesn’t only apply to a lot of money but also a lot of savings. Just like someone with a lot of money can get what they want whenever they want, someone who offers a lot of savings can get large customers bases whenever they want.
Potential customers need the right value proposition to turn into customers. The right value proposition, typically, comes down to more bang for the buck. Therefore, if providing value for money is so important, why not do it social media as well? In practice, this means posting offers that generate leads and conversions for the business. This can include everything from special discounts, event-based promotions, exclusive deals, and even free stuff.
Consider Using Stories and Humour
The best marketers will tell you one thing: marketing is about storytelling. The business that tells the better, more engrossing stories will take the audience for that special date. You can’t always be serious with your updates. You need to entertain your audience and one of the best ways of doing so is with humour.
If you can induce laughter or even a small smile, the chances of people remembering your business or your brand go up. More importantly, good humour engenders positive feelings in people, which in turn, can become associated with your business. Needless to say, having positive feelings associated with your business or your brand can only help the bottom line of your business.
Humour is the preferred vehicle for your storytelling, simply because it is easier and less controversial to implement than other emotions. Even so, if it makes sense to your brand, you can try to leverage other positive human emotions in your stories as well such as concern, consideration, empowerment, and emancipation.
Campaign with Visuals
You cannot have customer engagement with pure text. If you’ve been relying only on text to engage with your audience, then you shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of interest from your audience. The importance of visuals can’t be underestimated when it comes to your social media channels.
Visual types of social media content are so important that there are social media platforms devoted solely to them. Everyone knows YouTube and no social media platform is more visual-centric than YouTube. Other social media platforms that are visual-centric include Instagram, SnapChat, and Pinterest.
You absolutely need to incorporate visual content into your social media content strategy. Visual types of social media content typically contain images, videos, and graphics. You could try to create infographics, memes, corporate videos, humorous videos, or even still images pertaining to your business.
Canvas Opinions through Polls and Surveys
When you’re considering various types of social media content, you can’t ignore polls and surveys. Polls and surveys are exceptional tools not only to get your audience to respond to your posts and updates but also get feedback from them about your business. Depending on how you phrase and position your polls and surveys, you can get crucial insights about how well your business, brand, services, and products are perceived by your customers.
With the feedback you get from these polls and surveys, you can actually go about improving your own products and services, so as to improve your customers’ experiences. Furthermore, when your audience realises that you’re interested in what they think, their attitude towards your business will become more accommodating and understanding.
Finally, even people who are not your social media followers can see that you care about your customers when your existing followers participate in your polls and surveys. This may get them to consider you as their potential product or service provider as well.
How Knowing the Various Types of Social Media Content Solves Funding Problems
All types of social media content listed above can actually give your bottom line a boost either through reducing your expenses or increasing your conversions. Consider.
- Fresh, unique content is one of the pillars of getting people to trust your products and services. If they trust your business, they’re more prone to buying from you.
- Curating third party content is extremely easy. This means that every time you curate third party content, you save resources that may otherwise go into creating your own content.
- Unique value propositions are designed to get people to utilise your services and buy your products. You can provide your sales figures with a good impetus with simple discounts and a few free gifts.
- Humour and stories can be used to position your audience into the middle of your sales or marketing funnels. Shortening sales or marketing funnels, as you’ll already know, will result in more people buying from you.
- While producing visuals may be expensive, the right kind of visuals can help your business go viral. Therefore, if your infographic is worth $500 and it brings you 500 new leads by going viral, wouldn’t the cost per acquisition be better than most of your other marketing methods?
- Finally, polls and surveys will help you remove marketing research costs from your balance sheets and give your quantifiable insights regarding your target audience to boost sales.
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