Social media content generation is an essential part of any social media strategy, and one that can be done on a low budget with ideas from this article. There are three main types of content you should be creating for social media: user generated content (UGC), owned content, and paid for content.
If only there was a social media content generator that could crank out amazing posts scheduled to be posted at the optimal times. If only it were free, and had helpful instructions on how to use it. Well, guess what? There is!
Share Positive Statistics and News
People tend to believe and appreciate positive statistics and news. If you can come up with some statistics that portray your brand in a positive light, use them on social media.
When people see a positive statistic, they will trust your brand more. Some users who like such positive stats and stories may even share them.
In 2018, IBM introduced its supercomputer, Summit, which was the world’s fastest supercomputer at the time. They didn’t pass up a chance to share this news on social media – not forgetting to mention that it’s capable of doing 200K trillion calculations per second.
Such powerful statistics can surely connect with audiences well and is a brilliant way to create social media content that works.
Image via Instagram
The best way to create social media content that works is to prompt people to react. And statistics and news are perfect for that as people like to share both.
You need to figure out what sort of content can trigger emotions in your audience. Once you’ve figured that out, you will know how to create content for social media successfully.
Share and Repurpose User-Generated Content
The easiest way to create content for social media is by repurposing user-generated content. User-generated content is great for two reasons – it engages your audience and it creates greater brand awareness.
Such content may include guest posts, images, videos, online reviews, or even testimonials. When you share such posts, your audience can connect really well with them. This is because your audience believes that such content has been created by people just like them.
So they are more likely to engage with and share your content with others. According to a BrightLocal study, positive reviews make 73% of customers trust a business better. This is where user-generated reviews can help a lot.
Thankfully for brands, customers are more than happy to write reviews. The same survey found that when 74% of customers were asked for feedback, 68% wrote reviews online.
Image via Instagram
Apart from requesting that your customers write reviews, you can also ask them for their testimonials. Testimonials can serve as reviews too, and you can use them to your advantage.
You could also get your users to send in images and videos in which they are using your product. You can then share those on social media and on your product pages.
Daniel Wellington, for example, gives their followers a chance to get featured on their Instagram page. All they need to do is post their pictures of their Daniel Wellington watches and tag them using the branded hashtag.
Such user-generated content is great at engaging and connecting with their audiences. Thus, this is an excellent way to create social media content that your audience can connect with.
Image via Instagram
Leverage Influencer Marketing
When we talk about ways to create content for social media, we can’t overlook influencer content. Leveraging influencers is one of the best ways to create social media content that is authentic and engaging.
Influencers are social media celebrities who have a loyal fan-following on social media. Brands partner with such influencers for creating content for social media.
Even though they may be social media celebrities, not all of them may have a million followers. Many influencers have fewer but more engaged fans. Such influencers are called micro-influencers.
There are various ways to partner with influencers to leverage influencer marketing. You could ask the influencers to promote your brand using content created by them.
Image via Instagram
The involvement of an influencer can give your brand a human touch. An influencer’s endorsement builds trust for your brand in the minds of the influencer’s followers.
Creating content for social media with the help of an influencer can give you access to the influencer’s audience too. This, in turn, can increase your brand’s reach on social media platforms.
That’s not all. Influencer marketing has many more advantages. You can ask your influencers to try your products and share their reviews on social media. Such reviews or testimonials can also help you get the valuable attention of your audience. Your audience is more likely to relate to them. Influencer content is trusted by their audience and hence leveraging influencers to create content for social media is a brilliant strategy.
However, before you can start utilizing the real power of influencer marketing, you need to find influencers. There are thousands of influencers on social media, but you need to zero in on a few. These influencers should ideally be related to your brand or product niche.
When an influencer is in the same niche as yours, their audience will find your messages more relevant. With such influencers, there is a greater probability of a higher ROI.
Every social media platform has its own set of influencers. This means that an influencer who is great on Facebook may not be great on Instagram. In this case, finding a good influencer can be a tedious task.
There is also seemingly no way in which you can manually track the conversions through influencer marketing. Without a metric to judge an influencer’s performance, you cannot calculate your ROI. This makes it difficult to implement influencer marketing for creating content for social media.
Thankfully, there are tools and platforms available that can help you keep a track of everything. These take care of everything so that you can concentrate on creating quality content.
Grin allows you to find the finest influencers on social media who are popular in your niche. That is not all, it also helps you get in touch with them and recruit them. You can filter the influencers by category, location, and even social platforms.
Grin not only helps you recruit influencers but also helps you brief influencers in bulk. You can use the platform to collaborate with influencers easily and pay their fees with ease. You have the option of paying your influencer using products, cash, or both. Also, you can track their content directly through the platform.
As mentioned above, tracking the performance of your influencer marketing campaigns can be difficult. However, Grin sorts that out for you as well. You can see the feeds of all your influencers’ social profiles in a single screen.
This shows their content and how it is performing. Accordingly, you can find out which content is performing well and which ones are not. This way, you will easily be able to find out when your ROI becomes positive too.
Create High-Quality Content
This seems like the most obvious point, and it is, but it’s also forgotten too often. There are no shortcuts: shareable content is always high-quality content. If you focus on superficial topics and don’t invest enough time into research or content creation, you cannot expect your followers to become interested and engaged. This is one reason why longform content is doing better than ever.
Content development can take time and effort, so if you need professional help, here are some simple resources I have used in the past:
- Blog Title Generator: This tool will show you the list of the most relevant topics in any given niche.
- Headline Analyzer: Headline is the first thing that your readers notice and you have to come up with a catchy and intriguing solution. Headline Analyzer will tell you if you’ve succeeded.
- Essaysontime: If you decide that serious content creation is out of your reach, you can always ask for help from this expert writing service.
Use Smart Structuring
Internet users read very quickly, and nothing will turn them off more than a “wall of text”. Format your content intelligently by using numbered lists, bullet points and headers to easily highlight key information points.
Add Value to Users’ Lives
Informative content is good, but if your readers and clients can’t put your words in practice then they will not benefit from what you publish. A primary goal of content is to solve users’ problems and show how to overcome them; this will not only build brand loyalty, but it will keep them coming back for more. As long as the content you create is genuinely helpful, it’s also certain to be passed around.
Create a daily, weekly or monthly series
One great idea can become an engine for more great content if you turn it into a recurring series.
Vancouver magazine’s weekly “Takeout Thursdays” feature the food editor in a casual Instagram Live conversation with a local chef or food expert.
It’s way easier to think of a special guest or topic to plug into a pre-existing format than to start from scratch every week, and your audience can enjoy a little consistency in their torrid lives.
Meanwhile, Hootsuite’s Fridge-worthy: A Very Serious and Prestigious Social Media Awards Show features two of our own social media experts breaking down their favourite posts from brands every week. Here’s Episode 2:
Conclusion
Social media content is important. Whether you’re a business owner, blogger or writer, you want to generate content for your social media channels that provides value and promotes engagement among your followers.