What content should you post on social media?

Posting successful content on your social media platforms is all about strong research, creativity and quality.

Let’s drive the engagement on your posts and help get you going with great content by using the following 5 social media practices.

What do you (or your team) do every week that your audience might be interested in?

Tell a story. Give your followers an insight into you and your business and what goes on “behind the scenes”. Whether a shot from the latest (Zoom!) team meeting, your team doing activities in the community or a profile of the newest team meeting – people do business with people, so help them to get to know you.

Other story ideas could include:

1. Customer experience, as told through case studies, testimonials, reviews and social media posts.
2. Behind the scenes glimpses, from photos and videos to content that explains how you work.
3. Talks that you have hosted or participated in (with a couple of key points to take away)
4. Your story – what’s your mission and vision? Why did you start your business? How did your business get to this point?
5. What you do – what’s your product or service range, and how do you create or deliver them? Deomstrate a completed project.
6. Your inspiration – what and who inspires you and why?

Use humour in your content

Using humour in your content helps your brand to appear more human, and opens up your content to facilitate a conversation with your customers. (This won’t work if your customers don’t get your jokes – so make them as accessible as possible!)

A 2018 study found that 71% of consumers watch videos on social media for a laugh.

Answer questions. Solve a problem

If you want to create content that engages, you need to come up with ideas that solve your own problems – and will therefore help your audience out of a bind too.

For example, you know all those questions that get asked of your business via email, phone, and social media? Use those to create engaging content. If your customers are asking these questions, it might mean they cannot find the answers easily elsewhere – such as on your website? Answering questions leads to engagement as you’re providing a genuinely useful service to your customers.

Inspiring content

Content is highly dependent on your audience and, more often than not, it can be taken out of context. This is why content should be carefully crafted to fit the needs of your target demographic.

Users are inspired when they are shown that people are enjoying the same results that they want to achieve (ideally by following your guidance!). Just as gyms and fitness brands inspire their customers with before-and-after images and videos, consider what successes you can share with your audience.

You can even take this up a notch by providing a “how to” guide for your would-be customers, showing them just how it’s done, with real examples.

What content do your competitors post?

If your competitors are having a lot of success with their content, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Which social channels are they using?
2. How often – and when – do they post content?
3. What themes and hashtags do they use?
4. What sort of content is getting the most engagement?
5. Is there any way you can improve on what they’re doing?

Don’t copy your competitors and risk becoming a poor imitation of something that’s already working. Instead, build on what your competitors already do well to create a solid foundation on which to promote your unique content on your channels.