Entrepreneurs are always expected to provide fair value to their customers irrespective them paying for the product or service. It is always expected from them to juggle around their knowledge value proposition and keep their prospects happy. There is a constant need for an increasing share of voice in your visitors’ minds. Therefore, it is highly recommended to engage your customers with the type of content they like.
Social media channels can be incredibly powerful for your small business to create awareness and attract more customers. We are here to tell you that investing a little time and effort in your digital content strategy will steer your business for long term success.
For any new business coming up on social media, there is an unsolved dilemma that what kind of content you should be posting on social media and on channels you choose.
Your content marketing strategy would be based on three pillars. Let us understand all of them.
1. Relevance
Every digital marketing strategy starts with your objective and target audience. It mostly depends upon the nature of the business.
Here are some examples,
– If you are guitarist and your objective is to teach guitar online then your target audience could be young students who want to learn guitar online or interested in music.
– If you are a financial consultant, your target audience would be people who are earning and ready to invest or looking for financial advice.
– If you are an author, your target audience will be people who are interested in reading your genre.
Likewise, for every small business, there are different sets of objectives & audiences to cover. The key is to create your social media content in such a way that works for you in attracting customers and generating credibility of your business.
You are here to build relationships, nurture your prospects, and create trust with a sense of moral responsibility. You are here to show that you actually care about your business and can go the extra mile to achieve it.
It has always been tempting for entrepreneurs to post the type of content on social media which they personally like such as sharing memes, posting dog videos, and getting engaged with other brands directly. Social media channels are fragile per se. If not posted with the care it may turn into another casual page of entertainment, where consumers might expect invaluable entertainment. Remember, you are here for some serious business.
Take the above examples, what if the financial consultant posts irrelevant funny meme like any other random page. What kind of value the consultant is offering through that post. Would prospect perceive it as an official page?
Your content must move your prospects closer to you. It must connect the audience to the brand.
YOUR POST MUST BE RELEVANT TO YOUR BUSINESS!
2. Consistency
Imagine if your partner WhatsApp you thrice a day and then nothing for next week. If you ask them and they respond in four days? How would you feel?
You must be consistent and let your audience recognize you. Being consistent in your social media posting allows you to increase your engagement metrics with your audience. Your social media updates have to be consistent in terms of frequency, aesthetics & channels.
You must always avoid irregular postings on social media and create a well-structured content calendar. This content calendar would include all the channels you will be posting on, post format, time & date, copy lines, and images or videos you will be using. Today Reach organic audience has become extremely limited. There is only a handful you could reach with your post without sponsoring it as paid ads. Therefore, consistency would be the key to ensure you are reaching your followers regularly.
Pro Tip: Boost your social media posts for small amount targeted to people who are already following you so that it reaches a sizable audience. There is a lot of effort behind a post, you have to research your audience, select themes, write down copy lines, look for relevant images, schedule it at best possible time where engagement will be high. Therefore, you’d want that post to reach at least all of your audience who are already following you.
Aesthetics of your updates give you a visual appeal to your brand. The choice of words, colors & images creates a greater impact on your customers. Ensure to follow a specific color theme that could be similar to your logo. Using your logo of the same dimension, position in image posts to crease consistent build-up is mandatory.
The idea here is to be consistent enough to get on top of your customer’s mind. The golden law of share of voice works always.
YOUR POST MUST BE SEEN CONSISTENTLY!
3. Valuable
What you post on social media creates a perception of your brand in the customer’s mind. If you post something which adds value to oneself, it creates a positive perception, if the brand profile will be just like any other page sitting idle in a corner among the lists of the brand they are following.
The question here you should ask while putting yourself in the shoes of a user that what should I follow you if you do not add any value? It could be emotional value, if you are posting something which makes them laugh, cry, think, talk about it, you have created a positive impression in the user’s mind.
If your content could add value to the user in improving any activity’s performance or which is knowledge worthy, share-worthy, tag-worthy, you are again creating a positive impression in the user’s mind.
Creating valuable posts will strengthen the perception of your brand. This perception is the reality, it takes time to build. You have to power to set the context of perception, you have the authority to steer your brand in a particular direction. If you provide valuable content it will create a bond with your audience.
YOUR POST MUST BE PERCEIVED VALUABLE!
For E.g. Check out this Instagram page by edelweiss
Edelweiss Group is India’s leading financial conglomerates offering a broad range of financial products and services. By observation, you’ll be able to judge that these social media updates are relevant to their business, consistent in design, timely schedule and ultimately creating business + behavioral value in the audience.
So what are the types of content you can post?
Business-related content:
It could be market Data & insights, company news, industry news, press mentions, media appearance, product specifics, employee specifics, etc.
User-generated content:
It could be client testimonials in text or videos, re-sharing & liking tags, Guest post takeover, images from competition campaigns, real-life case studies, etc.
Interactive Content:
It could be GIFs, videos, stories, live-streams, polls, surveys, Quiz & Puzzles, etc.
Informative content:
It could be information dissemination in formats of Infographics, FAQs, How to’s, Quick tips & Tricks, Motivational quotes, etc.
You can use crossover content formats as well like sharing an interactive video on informative content generated by any of your pro user related to your business. Such ideas could be endless. Remember to be relevant, consistent, and offer value.
Create a digital content strategy document for your brand
A well-defined social media content strategy will help you to drive your ultimate business goal. This will act as a guiding light throughout your social media journey. Your strategy document will be updated every time when the course correction is required.
What are the components of a social media content strategy?
- A brief summary of your business
- Your marketing goals
- Scope & policies
- Target audience, research & expectations
- Need Gap analysis
- Competitive information and strategies
- Budget
- Content repository
- Content-specific objectives & Stories
- Content formats, resources, contexts
- Content calendar
- Content distribution and flow
- KPI & Monitoring tools
It would help you to create a perfect content strategy guide simply by drafting all the above points. It is a painstaking and time-consuming activity but totally worth it.
Creating a strategy document with all the specifics would be a chance to bring an order chaotic thoughts and ideas you want to implement. It helps in creating a road map to achieve your end goal. Social media takes a lot of effort and resources to build up a brand’s image. It would only take one single post which could make the audience un-follow your brand.