How To Create Engaging Social Media Content
Do you want to upgrade your social media content creation skills and reap the rewards from it but don’t exactly know how to? Does it feel like you don’t have enough time of the day for creating social media content that’s engaging enough and finding it tedious? Are you worried that you’re not doing enough social media for your brand and business? Stop your worries because, in this post, we will be talking about how to create engaging social media content. A plethora of ideas awaits you.
The Types of Content Categories:
Offering a variety of content types and sources of social media content is good for your business. It will keep your followers eager for what you have to post next. Basically, there are three types of content categories that you should be implementing in your social media strategy.
- Content that you have created – blog posts, articles, videos, promotional offers, personal ideas, image banners, etc.
- Content from others you shared – can be found through natural search and automation
- Content created for engagement – replies, likes, mentions, questions, etc
The most engaging social media content that is created by you should be short and sweet, like images and videos, a variety of formats, and direct links.
Content Created by You
There are so many contents that you can create and share on social media. Here are some ideas to get you started, don’t forget to jot down your favorites!
Branded Image
This first type of content is a crowd favorite. You can post anything, from funny or inspirational message to an image with your logo or website URL on it. It’s a great way to get noticed! Just post a branded image like the one below, and it’s going to be great content for your social media.
Product Photos
Posting product photos can be great for your social media content. Show off your products and make them eye-catching so it can drive people to buy your products directly.
Behind-the-scenes Photos
#candid – that’s what most people put in their description boxes when they post BTS (or behind-the-scenes) photos. Post candid shots of yourself, your office, your employees. It’s a great idea to show your followers how your brand really looks like behind the perfect photos. This content is interesting and fun to see, and it helps humanize your brand.
Behind-the-scenes Product Shots
You can also show behind the scenes of your products. This type of content works best on Instagram or Pinterest. Show how your photos were taken. Think of a great angle to show the bigger picture.
Ask for input from your followers
You can ask for input on new products from your fans and followers. Ask your followers what they think about your products. Not only will your followers interact with your brand, but they will also feel valued. Your followers will love giving their thoughts on how you can improve your products.
Photos that have nothing to do with your products or business
You don’t always have to talk about your business. Once in a while, post something completely unrelated to your products and your business. Show your human side, your personality. Post a fun photo, or something humorous, because that’s what makes an engaging social media content.
Link to your most popular blog post
Do you have a blog? Why not share a link to your most popular blog post? Post a brief intro to that post and tell your followers why it’s your most read and shared post. You can even pin them to the top of your news feed.
Share pictures from a recent industry event
Have you recently been to an industry event? This is a perfect opportunity to create original content from photos and quotes taken from the event. Use the event hashtag for maximum exposure.
Take a trip down memory lane
It’s fun to take your audience down memory lane with you. Have you heard of #ThrowbackThursday? These types of posts are so much fun to see. Share photos of your old logos, old websites, or even your very first product.
Use your website analytics to find content ideas
Take a quick look through your analytics to find out which topics generate the most interest from your audience. From that, you’ll get an idea of what content to create to post on your socials.
Link to a guest post
Have you ever written a guest post before? Why not share that? Don’t just do it once, repost it every now and again. This will increase traffic to your post and will keep your host blog happy.
Share random tips
As a business or brand, you want to be seen as an industry leader and stay at the top of your game. Why not share random tips for your niche? You can make it into an image or an infographic, and you’ll stand out even more.
Answer a question from Quora
Have you heard of Quora? It’s a website where people ask questions and other people answer them. Find a relevant question in your niche on Quora and answer it on your social media. Answering something that people in your industry are looking answers for will validate your authority and will establish you as an industry leader. Search for the most popular question and create a social media post to answer it. Don’t forget to hashtag the keyword for maximum exposure.
Random posts that show you’re a real person
Putting a face to a name will humanize your brand. Show people that you are a real person. Post a photo of your dinner or what book you are currently reading. Share your plans for the weekend, or even post stories about your pet. These things will show you most authentically.
Promote your products or services
There’s a time and place for self-promotion, but first and foremost, use social media to build relationships, establish trust, and build your reputation as an industry expert. Use the 80-20 rule. 20% promotion and 80% value. Make sure you’re providing as much value as you can and only promoting once in a while so you won’t annoy your followers.
Content Shared by You
Social media is not always about creating your own content, most times, it’s about sharing and celebrating other people’s work, too.
New and Relevant Industry data and statistics
This type of content performs greatly in terms of retweets and shares. Data can help you influence your audience to engage with your business and buy your product or service. Remember to look out for reports that provide these data so you can share them with your audience.
Infographics
Infographics are visually pleasing graphics to share on social media. Find an infographic that your followers would appreciate. You could check out Pinterest or the daily infographic for ideas and share it with your audience.
Recommend a tool
You can also share a tool (preferably a free one) or a resource that you think your followers will find useful. Take a look at your business and notice what tools you’re already using. You can recommend those to your fans and followers.
Share popular Reddit topic
Have you ever been to Reddit? It’s a website where everything can be found. Visit Reddit’s trending subreddit page to find popular and trending topics to post and share about.
Share a trending Twitter topic
You could also use Twitter’s trending content to find popular and trending content and share it on Facebook, Pinterest, or Linkedin. Just because it’s a trending topic on Twitter, doesn’t mean you can’t share it on other social media platforms.
Share breaking industry news
You should definitely stay on top of what’s going on in your industry by using google alerts. If you haven’t done this already, go to this link and start creating alerts that are related to your niche. With this, you could be the first to let your audience know about breaking news in your niche and be seen as an industry leader.
Promote someone else’s sale
Again, social media is not always being about you, most of the time, it’s celebrating others. So why not share a link to a coupon or sale from a complementary business? Just make sure they’re not your competition.
Content that engages
In this portion, we are going to talk about creating content that will generate engagement with your followers.
Quotes
This type of content can create great engagement because quotes are very relatable no matter what people do for a living. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an image, even a plain text quote will do. Just remember to tag the person you’re quoting if you can.
Fill-in-the-blank posts
Fill in the blank posts are so much fun. It can potentially generate a huge amount of replies, retweets, and likes. It’s important to make it easy to fill in though, don’t go asking your followers to solve a difficult math problem.
Run Polls
You can run polls to create engagement. Both Facebook and Twitter have their in-built poll, but you can also create polls on an external website and link it to your social media post.
Ask for testimonials or reviews
Obtaining reviews from followers is one of the best ways to get testimonials you can use as social proof on your website.
Provide a recommendation
Share the love by recommending a business you’ve worked with successfully in the past.
Ask for advice
Another great way to create engagement is to pose a hypothetical question and ask your followers what they would do in a certain situation.
Recommend someone else to follow on social media
Spread the love. Share a link to someone else’s social media profile and encourage your fans to like or follow them.
“Caption This”
Post a photo and ask fans to come up with creative captions. I personally partake in these!
Ask for questions
#AskMeAnything – This is when you allow your fans and followers to ask you anything for a specific amount of time, say an hour or so. A quick tip: Make sure that you are a known industry leader or expert in your field before attempting to do this, or that you have a lot of followers that really do engage with you because if you’re not in that position, you might not get as much engagement and you might be disappointed.
Start a conversation with an industry leader
You can also tag or mention an expert or an industry leader in a post. This is a great way to gain a really good quality following. Build relationships with people that influence your industry, but don’t expect them to reply all the time. Be clever about how you approach them. Never be sleazy or be disrespectful of other people’s time and never demand an answer. Always leave the question open-ended because people don’t like to be pushed into a conversation that they didn’t ask to be a part of.
Answer an FAQ
Do you have a question that you get asked a lot again and again? Instead of answering it only for one person, why not answer it on social media? Or even better, you can link the FAQ page on your website to drive more traffic.
Time Saving Strategies
Social media platforms are free and easy to use, but many businesses have trouble finding the time and managing their schedule effectively for social media. It takes a great deal of regular work, so here are some tips for effective time management.
- Monitor your Time. Try to keep a detailed record of exactly how you use your time on each platform.
- Schedule your social media time. Decide when during the day you are going to spend on your social media. Create time slots according to your audience’s peak times.
- Write your posts in bulk. Create posts beforehand to save time and schedule them. You can sit down for an afternoon and create a stock of posts for each social media channel.
- Create an ideas file. When you get an idea or something that you like to create, save it to an ideas file. This can be very useful, as sometimes we tend to get inspiration from anything we encounter in our day. This will be great when the “writer’s block” happens. At least you’ll have an ideas file ready so you can just go over it to have something to create.
Creating engaging social media content is not as hard as you think, but it can be time-consuming and requires regular work. But if you develop a technique and keep the things above in mind, you will have a steady flow of ideas. And I’m sure you’ll be creating engaging social media content easily, like a pro!
