For a lot of people, coming up with content that engages their audience seems daunting, overwhelming, and time consuming. However, there is no need to feel bad if this person is you because content creation is easier than you think and if all else fails it’s alright to post what you have already constructed because anything is better than not taking any action at al!
“55% of business to business marketers said it is unclear within their organization what an effective or successful content marketing program looks like.”
— CONTENT MARKETING INSTITUTE
To quote the Content Marketing Institute, “55% of business to business marketers said it is unclear within their organization what an effective or successful content marketing program looks like.” So, today we’re going to discuss some ideas with you about how to make the process of content creation less stressful and how you can be sure that your content will engage your customer and bring them value.
The first step that you should take when planning out your content is getting into the mindset of your audience and thinking about the platform you will be posting your content to. So, to understand the mindset of your audience it is important to take a step back and look at what your audience’s day looks like and look at what time of day you are trying to engage on social media. There are tools out there that can help you with this and some social platforms provide insights that provide you with the best time of day to post. A practical way to plan your content timeline is to look at a monthly calendar and think ahead about what upcoming event your consumer or client might be involved in. A great example of this is the Fourth of July because you know exactly when this event is going to happen and it’s safe to assume that a large portion of your audience will more than likely be celebrating it as well. Therefore, potential content that can be created around the Fourth of July is a video that shares some tips and tricks to have a safe Fourth of July, some articles that share festive Fourth of July recipes, or a post that asks your audience to share some pictures of how they are celebrating. Then you can easily reuse those pictures as customer spotlights which helps foster your relationship with your audience even more because:
- You are giving them value because you are giving them exposure.
- You are saying that you value them as a customer.
- You are engaging with them and they are engaging with you.
Posting a video, article, or a post asking your audience to engage is a great way to share a diversity of posts. This leads into another important factor of content planning, which is varying the styles of content that you post.
“Behind the scenes videos are some of the most effective engagement videos because they provide a personal touch and real insight to your business. It is a powerful tool for creating loyal fans of your brand and it should be a weekly thing that you do.”
— BRYAN FITTIN
Not posting the same type of content all the time makes sure your audience is never bored with what you are producing and it ensures they are always pleasantly surprised with what you post, which will result in increased engagement. Some examples of varied content are branded graphics, videos, testimonials, blog posts, research articles that line up with your industry, and podcasts. Video is one of the best ways to get people to stop and focus on your content because the movement and music are great attention grabbers. Behind the scenes videos are some of the most effective engagement videos because they provide a personal touch and real insight to your business. It is a powerful tool for creating loyal fans of your brand and it should be a weekly thing that you do. People are not always looking for highly produced content, sometimes the raw interactions gives your brand some humanity and relatability. This is especially powerful for businesses that don’t have a brick and mortar location because it allows your audience to place a face with your business.
Behind the scenes content can also be reused in the future to help showcase the growth of your business and provide documentation of where your business started versus where it is now. We refer to content that can be reused as “evergreen content.” This is content that can be posted at a later date and still be relevant and bring the same amount of value, if not more, to your audience. Even if your audience saw the content the first time you posted, it won’t cause any harm to refresh them on the history of your business. This strategy will help eliminate you producing amazing content that runs its course on social media and then goes to the graveyard because people never see it again. Therefore, being smart with your content and making shorter snippets out of your larger content will drive people back to the longer content. Referring back to the earlier Fourth of July example, it would be very easy and save you time if you divided the photos that your audience provided to you about how they are celebrating the Fourth of July into multiple smaller posts and then posting those periodically after the Fourth of July instead of posting them all at once in a video. This will cause people to refer back to or search for your older Fourth of July content which is the type of long-term engagement that you want.
Lastly, if you don’t have any ideas of what type of content to generate, see what the top ten questions your audience is asking you and create content out of those inquiries. This is a fool proof way of knowing if your audience is going to be interested in your content or if you are going to bring them value because they are the ones relaying to you what information they are searching for or are in need of.
