Social media content is becoming among the most persuasive kind of content for marketing and promoting a business. Consumers have so many social media apps on their phones. Therefore, posting about your brand on various social media platforms is like penetrating into consumers’ handphones.
Regardless of which social media platform you use, as long you use it in the right way, your social media marketing will show results. Big and small businesses prefer social media content over any other form of web content because social media involves influencers who can literally carry your brand name, and spread the word about it without charging you huge amounts of money.
What is Social Media Content?
Any content that you prepare and publish on a social media site to directly or indirectly promote your business is called social media content. Social content can be text, images, animations, videos, or live streams. Depending on the platform you are publishing on, your social content needs to be optimized for your target audience.
For example, if you are posting on Facebook or Instagram, your social content must be precise and to the point. Instagram stories are more about images and video snippets, accompanied with short phrases or taglines called ‘captions’. Facebook pages are for slightly longer posts, i.e. complete sentences. Facebook and Instagram are commonly used for sharing the same kinds of posts, as they both have similar templates and can be easily integrated with websites.
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If you are into blogging and like to write articles as your brand content on social media, you can start a blog and share the links to your blog posts on your Facebook page. Posting an entire article on a Facebook or LinkedIn page is not a suitable social media content strategy.
Youtube, on the other hand, is for publishing videos. If there is a lot of video content on social media about your brand, you can have a large audience to market your brand anytime you want. All you need to do for that is build a large subscribership for your Youtube channel. Social media content on a Youtube channel with a good number of subscribers can go a long way in developing your brand equity.
So social media content can be in different formats. But the important thing is to know how to create an effective social media content plan for any platform you choose.
How to Create an Effective Social Media Content Plan?
Social media content planning requires a lot of thought. A business’s social media content strategy depends on the following factors.
1. The Type of Products it is Selling
If a business is selling technical products, a lot of product details would need to be included. If the same content is posted on an online store, you will need to write catchy product descriptions.
2. The Kind of Niche it is Targeting
It is important to post your social media content on a platform that’s relevant to your niche. For example, LinkedIn will be a suitable platform for you to promote your business if you are selling human resources or recruitment services. But if your business is about selling digital products, the best strategy for you could be to create a digital products website and share the links of its web pages on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
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3. The Amount of Marketing Budget it Has
Your marketing budget should be a part of your social media content strategy from the beginning. You need to track the results of your social media content plan and take corrective actions accordingly if required.
If your social media content is integrated with your website, you can track the results of your marketing campaign to some extent through your website analytics. If you build a website in Strikingly, we give you access on your dashboard to Strikingly statistics for your website as well.
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4. The Phase of Business it is in
Coming up with a social media content plan also requires you to consider the phase that your business is in. If you have just started an online store and want to increase the brand awareness and traffic to the store, you wouldn’t want to spend a lot of money running paid Facebook Ads.
You can create short and straightforward social media content to post as pictures on Instagram in this case. You can include your product photos, your website screenshots, and other general photos about the industry in your Instagram posts.
How Does Social Media Content Benefit Your Business?
Posting social media content about your brand has a ton of benefits for your business.
1. Reach Large Audiences
Every social media platform that you use for your social media content strategy will have its own audience. On top of that, if you choose to do influencer marketing, you will reach an even more significant number of people because each influencer you use will have its own following. You need to get your message across to as many people as possible to increase your conversion rates and build your brand awareness. The more people hear about your brand, the higher the chances that they might consider buying from you.
2. Increase Your Content’s Shareability
Social media content is very easy to share. All a user needs to do is click the ‘Share’ button beneath a social media post, and it will appear on their timeline or profile, visible for all their friends or followers to see. In fact, most of the marketing campaigns that go viral are because people start sharing them with their friends and peers on social media.
Integrating your website content with your social media content enhances its shareability. A good thing about shareability is that when people get your brand message from a friend, they do not judge it or feel forced to view it. They read it willingly, as they see it as a friendly message. This increases the chances that they will be receptive to the brand or product being introduced. If they find the statement interesting or entertaining, they will likely share it further with all of their friends and contacts.
3. Reduce Your Marketing Costs
Using influencers to share your social media content significantly reduces your marketing costs. Instead of paying for Facebook or Google for ad campaigns, you can negotiate a lower price with young social media influencers. Get them to share your brand message and slogan with all of their followers regularly. This can take a snowball effect and potentially cause your campaign to go viral. If that happens, your social media content will end up getting shared with thousands of people with zero effort or cost on your part. This is how powerful social media marketing can bring. That’s why businesses make it a point these days to include social media icons on their website’s footer.
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4. Generate Organic Content
When your audience starts to engage with your brand in social media marketing, they also start generating content in feedback, comments, and tweaks. This helps you generate organic content on top of your brand’s promotional social media content. This organic content has a lot of value because it is seen as authentic by everyone who reads it.
5. Increase Traffic to Your Website
Content on social media can also help you drive traffic to your website. The more people visit your site, i.e., the higher your website traffic, the higher your chances of making sales. Make sure your website is easy to navigate and has good customer support mechanisms built into it. If your customers do not like what they see on your site after visiting it, they will leave. This will cause a high bounce rate for your site.
You can always keep a check on your website’s traffic through your site’s statistics. If you build a site in Strikingly, you will have access to the Strikingly statistics. You can also choose to add your Strikingly website to Google Analytics.
If you want to create a responsive, simple-to-build, and user-friendly website for your brand, try out Strikingly. We have many appealing website templates for you to choose from. We make the whole website building process simple for you. And in case you still face any issues, our customer support is available to help you 24/7 through our live chat feature.
In the Strikingly editor, you can use the drag-and-drop feature to add content to your web pages. Your website can be ready without you having to write any code. Our tools are designed for those who are not into programming or coding but want to establish a quality online presence for their brand. You can begin by simply signing up for your free Strikingly account.
At Strikingly, we love seeing our users’ businesses thrive through the websites they build with us and the social media content they post on different platforms.
