A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Content Creation

Effective social media content creation is not as difficult as many business owners think. 

If you follow the strategies for social content creation that have worked for other businesses in the past, you can also create engaging content that helps you achieve your business goals. 

We will show you how to create a social media content strategy that also helps you create effective social content in this blog – let’s dive in!

 

Types of Social Media Content

Generally speaking, all social media content creation can be divided into four formats:

• Textual content
• Image content
• Audio content
• Video content

 

Notice that these are not types of content, rather these are formats in which content can be created. You have to learn about the six types of content mentioned below before you get started with content creation. 

 

1. Educational

The purpose of creating educational content is to teach your target audience. Posting educational content shows that you know all the necessary details about your target industry, and your audience can trust your products and services. 

The types of educational content are 

• Free resources
• Video lessons
• Infographics
• Case studies
• Little-know tips
• How-to posts 

 

2. Inspirational

As a business owner, you have to inspire your social audiences so they can get better in life by using your products and services. Inspirational content allows you to put your audience first and makes it easier for you to address their challenges. 

Source: instagram.com

 

The types of inspirational content are

• Quotes
• Trivia
• Success stories

 

3. Interactive

The best way to interact with your target audience and build your credibility on social channels is to post interactive content. People like and share interactive content because it helps them portray a sense of connectedness to a certain issue or topic.

The types of interactive content are

• Quizzes
• Calculators
• Contests
• Graders

 

4. Promotional

Promotional content can help you boost your brand through “word of mouth marketing.” Persuasive promotional content can help you get great results from your sales promotion strategy on social channels. 

The types of promotional content are

• Coupons
• Discounts
• Sign-ups
• Client testimonials 

 

5. Entertaining 

Entertaining content helps you humanize your brand as it portrays that you’re not another boring business that people tend to avoid. Publishing entertaining content on social media also helps you get more followers. 

The types of entertaining content are

• Memes
• Viral videos
• Holiday content
• Giveaways

 

6. Newsworthy 

Sharing news about your target industry helps you position yourself as a thought leader in your target industry. Newsworthy content gets more social shares as people love to show that they are up-to-date with the new trends. 

The types of newsworthy content are

• News reports
• Special features
• Industry statistics 

 

The Takeaway

Publishing only Entertaining or Newsworthy content is not going to help you achieve your business goals through social media. You need to identify the changing needs of your target audience and integrate them with your social media content creation strategy to stand out from other businesses. 

 

Create Your Strategy

You need to create an effective social media content strategy to enlist your challenges, your goals, and your plan on how you want to boost your business through social channels. 

Creating a social media strategy is not as difficult as many people think. You don’t necessarily have to hire a social media content creation service to develop a winning social strategy. Here are the four essential tips that will help you create a winning social content strategy easily: 

  

1. List Your Goals

Setting goals you want to achieve by posting persuasive social content will make it easier to calculate your Social ROI. On the other hand, if you don’t set goals before you start posting content on social media, you’d be dumbfounded at what you’re achieving by investing your time, money, and effort on social media. 

Setting goals can get difficult for you if you’ve never created a social strategy before. These pointers can help you set achievable goals for your social media strategy:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable 
• Relevant 
• Time-bound

By keeping these metrics in mind, you can choose goals that align with your brand identity and help you succeed as a business owner. 

 

2. Identify Your Target Platforms

You cannot expect to get the same results from all social channels. Keep in mind that not all your prospects are going to be on a single social platform. 

There’s no denying you should adopt a “cross-channel” social media content creation strategy, but it doesn’t mean you have to ignore the social channel where most people follow you. You can identify the famous social platform in your target audience by taking a look at your competitors (more on this in the next step). 

 

3. Analyze Your Competitors

The “Holy Grail” of finding success on social media lies in the dungeon of competitor analysis. Instead of finding all the information about your target audience and crafting your strategy from scratch, you can analyze your competitors to pave your way towards social media success. 

Learning from your competitors makes it easier to choose the best strategies and avoid the ones that don’t bring any results. 

Here is how you can do social media competitor analysis the right way:

 

4. Learn About Your Target Audience

Having zero information about your target audience when posting content on socials will never help you achieve your goals. You have to create an “audience persona” that allows you to learn essential information about your target audiences like

• Age
• Location
• Income
• Interests

and the list goes on. 

You can read this amazing guide on audience persona by OSU to cover the basics of how an audience persona can help you with your marketing purposes. 

 

Choose Your Tools

The act of creating and publishing content while tracking the results is not as easy as most people think. If you want to adopt a social media content creation strategy that persuades, educates, and entertains people in your target audience, you have to get help from the right tools. 

Choosing the best social media content creation and management tools for social content creation is not as difficult as you might think. Here are some essential tips that can help you choose a good social content creation tool: 

 

Now that you know what to look for when choosing social media content creation tools, here are some of the best tools that check all the boxes and fulfill the needs of every social media marketer:

 

• Canva

 

Creating attractive graphics for social media content is not difficult at all if you use Canva. The free version of this tool can help create graphics effortlessly. However, if you want to access all the features of Canva, you can buy a subscription or opt for the enterprise plan. 

 

• Animoto

 

Animoto makes it easier to blow life into existing images and video content. You can also access the extensive library and storyboards to create videos from scratch if you have time for it. Animoto offers a paid version that provides access to all their tools. 

 

• CapCut

 

CapCut is the most intuitive app for smartphone users to create captivating social images and videos. This app has become the top choice for both social media users and creators alike. You can upgrade to the premium version of this app if you don’t want watermarks on your photos and videos. 

 

• Anchor

 

If you are planning on creating podcasts, you have to use Anchor to create, publish, and monetize your podcast the right way. The good thing about this app is that you can use it for free. This app also allows you to create amazing audios and videos you can share on your socials. 

 

• Hashtagify.me

 

Adding relevant hashtags to your social content is super easy if you use Hashtagify.me. This app has a paid version if you are willing to access the extra features. Using Hashtagify.me, you can also find the influencers who rank against hashtags to help you with influencer marketing. 

 

Plan Your Content

Posting content whenever you feel like posting won’t help you achieve the goals for your social media needs. If you want to stand out from the crowd and get more organic followers on Social Media, you have to align your social media content creation routine with a solid plan. 

Creating a plan and sticking to it is not difficult at all. Here are four tips that can help you create an actionable social media plan that can make it easier for you to achieve your business goals!

 

• Create Your Social Calendar

Having a social media calendar makes it easier for you to organize your content around the trends in your target industry. With a proper calendar, you can proactively plan what you are going to post on your social channels and when you will publish content. 

Source: monday.com

 

Creating a calendar from scratch doesn’t require a lot of time and effort. If you’re not a big fan of fiddling with spreadsheets, you can start with a social media calendar template and optimize it according to your publishing needs. 

 

• Conquer Your Target Social Channels

After identifying the social channels where your target audience is active the most, you have to find ways on how you can conquer those social channels. Growing your followers to a sizable audience will make it easier for you to track the results you get from your social media marketing strategy. 

For example, if more people in your target audience are active on LinkedIn, you have to learn how you can post content and optimize your strategy to get more followers on LinkedIn than your competitors. 

 

• Repurpose Your Old Content

Creating content from scratch is not necessary when crafting your social media content creation strategy. If you want to get closer to your goals without losing the interest of your target audience, you need to repurpose your old content into meaningful social content.

Source: referralrock.com

 

Repurposing your old content doesn’t require a lot of time and effort. There are several tools you can use that can help you create bite-sized content pieces from your successful content. For example, you can trim your engaging YouTube video into short videos that can help you get traction on social channels. 

 

• Create an Engagement Plan

Posting content without learning about the changing trends in your target audience won’t help you strengthen your online brand. If you want to keep your target audience engaged with you on socials, you need to create a proper engagement plan. 

Here are some tips to help you create a social media engagement plan in simple steps:

• Arrange Online Sessions
• Conduct Simple Polls
• Add CTAs to Your Content
• Post Viral Content 
• Ask Questions from Your Audience
• Host Giveaway Sessions 

For example, you can conduct polls on your socials to find out what type of content is the most engaging for your target audience. Knowing what your audience has to say will make it incredibly easy for you to post content that resonates with your audience and keeps them engaged. 

 

Start Creating Content

Continuously generating content that your target audience likes is not easy even if you have a proper social content strategy. But you can make things easier for yourself if you follow the best practices on how to get into content creation discussed below. 

 

• Create more Video Content

Unless you’re a guru that has a lot of followers on social media, chances are that people are not going to read your lengthy written posts online. Remember that people on socials find textual content less engaging compared to images and videos. 

 

So if you want to get more followers and achieve your business goals through social media content creation, you need to create more video content. Publish short videos on socials that captivate your target audience and encourage them to follow you for more!

 

• Avoid Using Stock Photos

You might think about using stock photos if you’re not a big fan of going outside and taking photos. There’s no denying that using stock photos can save you a lot of time, but remember that stock photos are not loved by social media users. 

 

In today’s social age, people prefer original content instead of interacting with corporate stock images. You want to avoid posting any type of content on social media that your audience doesn’t like, right? Make sure you take photos yourself to humanize your brand and show that you prefer authenticity. 

 

• Follow the Trends

Trendy, viral content also does wonders for a social media content creation strategy. If you want to keep your followers engaged and find new followers at the same time, you have to publish content around trending topics in your target industry. 

Finding about the trending topics in your target industry is not as difficult as many people think. Here are some ways you can find out about the trends without wasting your time and effort:

• Check the Most Repinned Posts on Pinterest. 
• Find trending hashtags on Instagram. 
• Check the Insights of Your Facebook and Instagram pages. 

 

• Connect with Influencers

A simple way you can create and publish great content on social media is to link up with influencers. Connecting with influencers makes it easier for you to build your authority online and find more followers. 

 

• Share Testimonials

If you’re selling products and services online, you must show that customers trust you. The best way to establish your authority is to post reviews on socials that your satisfied customers have shared in the post. 

 

• Share Industry News 

You need to post about the latest trends and news in your industry to increase your authority online. For example, you can summarize the latest news in a short video so your audience knows what’s going on in the industry. 

 

Conclusion

We have shared how to develop a social media content creation strategy, even if you have no prior experience in this blog. 

You can follow the social media content development tips mentioned above to create engaging content that boosts your business’s growth. In case you have any queries about creating social content, you can contact our SMM experts to find satisfying answers to all your questions.