Social Media Content

21 August 2017 | Anastasia Zharkikh

So, you have already chosen your key goals on social media, developed the promotion strategy and started managing your group.

Now it’s time to pay attention to your tactics and content for social networks. It should be interesting for your target audience and help you reach your goals.We discussed the goals in the previous article. So what about your followers? Have you already thought about what your readers do on the Internet? We, as well as many other social media specialists, have also thought about it and distinguished several activities people engage in on the Internet:

Having fun;
Learning;
Obtaining bonuses and winning prizes;
Communicating, sharing impressions and emotions.

You should focus your attention on the sphere where your interests and the interests of your target audience meet. What does that mean?

General info. The golden rule of content for social media

Western experts developed the golden rule for content which we stick to in our work as well. According to this rule, your content should consist of the following:

social media content

Engaging content caters to the needs in communication, bonuses, and prizes. It builds loyalty to your brand and makes it more interesting. Engaging content includes:

Regular surveys,
News in the form of images and videos with discussions in the comments,
Encouraging users to comment and provide feedback,
Advice from customers on how to improve the product;
Q&A
Quizzes about your service or product and other competitions.

User-generated content is created by volunteers, brand advocates. This type of content increases brand loyalty as any feedback from grateful customers is much more credible than self-promotion. Subscribers like such content as it may contain insights for them.

User-generated content includes:

Stories and interviews of your employees;
Interviews with admins and moderators;
Videos from your events, conferences, and meetings;
Customer stories about your products;
Short videos about cooperation with you;
Suggestions from customers;
Common problems and solutions.

Educational content is:

Your company’s history;
Helpful info about your products and services;
Your awards and certificates;
Announcements of upcoming events;
Industry news;
Historical facts related to the topic of the community;
Webinars about your products and how to use them.

Promotional content shouldn’t get on the nerves of your audience, so don’t post it too frequently. It includes:

Links to PDF marketing materials, videos, photos;
Commercials;
Selected facts;
Reviews.

‘But our readers need entertainment, what about that?’ you may ask, and rightly so. We believe that this need can be satisfied by various types of content. That’s when we proceed to the details of designing content for social media.

Details. Social media content design

First, let's take a closer look at what is now dominating the web. To our deepest regret, we see countless identical photo stock images. Remember “The Wall” By Pink Floyd? Especially the scene where children go through an assembly line and become the same. That’s what happens when social media groups are filled with stock photos - they lose their identity.

social media content

Find fresh images and brand your content for social media. A tiny frame in the colors of your brand or your logo will help you stand out. It’s even better to create your own unique content. People like cats and want to be entertained? Then give them cats and games! Of course, accompanied by your brand.

social media content

Control the quality of social media content. Rely on feedback

Don’t stay too much in the dream world losing touch with reality, or, to be precise, with the topic of your group and your target audience. Rely on feedback! Monitor the stats, pay attention to the number of likes and shares as they show how relevant your content is for the audience. Moreover, likes and comments on Facebook promote your posts as they are displayed in the feeds of your followers which widens your reach. On Vkontakte the reach grows only when your content gets shared.

When and how often to post?

It’s a tricky issue, and you should approach it keeping your real abilities in mind. The key thing is to post regularly. If you set the goal of 2-3 posts a day, stick to it. If you can’t produce interesting and useful content at such a rate, publish less, but try to do it at least once a day.

As to the time, you should be guided by the peak hours when your audience is online. This info is available in Facebook stats. According to our observations, most users are online from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. However, different groups have somewhat different stats. Again, think about your resources as it might not be convenient for you to work late hours. Posts can be scheduled, of course, but you should take their nature into consideration. If the post prompts many questions that require quick answers, someone will have to give them.

By the way, both on Facebook and Vkontakte the time of posting no longer matters as much as it used to because these social networks have switched to a new algorithm. The ranking of the news depends more on their popularity than the time they were published.