Introduction to Social Media Content Marketing
Hey you. Ever wondered what makes a successful content marketing strategy?
It can be a pickle for sure. I mean, ‘content marketing’… Sure, you’ve heard the words before, possibly even in that order but what exactly do they mean? Good question.
Content marketing is the variegated practice of producing original content, designed to scale audiences and grow your ROI.
It’s also an industry set to swell to an impressive $600 billion in 2024, with effective content occupying the centre stage of 91% of social media marketers.
From ideation, to creation and finally publication, content marketing involves a broad party of creatives and number-crunchers that work tirelessly across mediums to fine-tune and tell the stories that your brand needs to get out into the world.
Sure, anybody can tip-tap a keyboard; plug in a microphone; turn on a camera, but without the requisite skills and insight poor content creation can lead to messy outcomes: shoddy reception, brand reputation crises, the fact of generally being overlooked…
So what makes up the difference? Why does some content deliver results whilst other content just delivers disappointment?
Done right, effective content marketing on social media is engaging and responsive to analytics. It is a portal through which to communicate with the world and to control the narrative.
All sounds pretty important, right? Well we think so too and so we’ve put together a comprehensive guide to help you make the most of your content. Enjoy!
Creating Content That Resonates: Tips and Techniques
It all starts with the quality of the cut.
Good content creation is an artform. It means producing something that is at once true to you whilst also being attractive and true to your audience. In other words, it’s effectively the building of a bridge between your provisions and others’ needs – an illuminating of the path to encouraging a relationship between you and your audience.
Below, we’ve listed our top 3 tips and tricks to getting it right…
Be Genuine
Playing the content game shouldn’t mean gambling your reputation.
Being genuine and staying true to the story, the ethos, the design of what makes your brand the brand that it is cannot be underestimated.
Companies fall down when they let their voices stray in pursuit of audiences for the wrong reasons.
A successful brand employing content marketing effectively is as in touch with itself as it is with audiences across social media.
Stay true to you.
Be Unique
There’s a lot of noise out there, it can be hard to get a look in sometimes.
In order to stand above the rest, effective content creation means being bold in design and innovative in delivery.
It means staying fresh. Now, that’s where quality creatives earn their salt.
Coming up with original ideas in an Information Age defined by a never ending cycle of pictures, sounds and text is a daunting task and not one to be sniffed at.
Staying new whilst retaining an authenticity of brand – keeping that nugget of what makes you you – is crucial to the execution of a successful content marketing strategy across social media.
Stay in-tune
Content works when it is responsive. Responsive to a broader climate, and responsive to the user.
In combination with analytics, and wider societal patterns that may have an influence on audience behaviour, content marketing should work to deliver when, how, and what audiences most need.
Full-funnel, holistic social media marketing then is an imperative to getting the job done right.
In that vein, and in order to stay true, fresh and in-tune, the team at Social Chameleon can most definitely help you out.
Choosing the Right Platforms for Your Content
After you develop the right story, you have to decide on where’s the best place to tell it… In order to be successful in the social media sphere when delivering effective content marketing, the right platform to reach your intended audience makes all the difference.
It’s no good shouting about the tweed jackets and half-price zimmer frames you’re trying to flog in the queue to the nightclub, just as it’s no good shouting your brand’s story across a channel where your audience isn’t there to hear it.
We’ve listed a brief breakdown of some of the best places to get your message across in 2024, and what sort of content you might expect to find there:
Saturated in images and sounds, Instagram is a content space best suited to quick and punchy content with an emphasis on lifestyle advertising. Content that is aesthetic in its
focus, with forms such as infographics with snappy captions work particularly well across this platform.
TikTok
A useful space for harnessing the grassroots power of UGC, TikTok cannot be underestimated as a litmus on the consumers of tomorrow. With younger demographics turning to the platform for plentiful, punchy and fast-paced content this platform favours the amateur-chic.
Meta
One of the old-boys of the social media universe, Meta – previously Facebook – has been around the block. As of right now, the space is quickly changing, adapting to the sort of content pacing that younger generations are leaning towards. With more of an allowance for lengthier content, this platform enables user engagement with blog posts, longer-form videos and graphic elements.
YouTube
With a similar history and reputable grounding in the world of content creation, YouTube is a trusted household name. Favouring anything and everything in the remit of video, the platform lends itself particularly to the creative whims of cinematographers, editors and vloggers.
X
Textual and opinion-heavy, X – formerly Twitter – is another scroll-based channel that restricts users to 280 characters of communication. For pithy and opinionated content that quickly finds its herd, this platform is for the word-heavy story-tellers out there.
Engagement Strategies: How to Interact with Your Audience
Tone, focus and reach. Engagement that is truly responsive and sensitive to the user is hard to come by. Creatives that can deliver a story, with their finger to the pulse of what makes audiences tick can be few and far between but when you have some on your side – the sky’s the limit.
Tone
Make sure to adopt the right voice when speaking to your audience.
Who will resonate with your story? Who needs to hear what you’re saying?
Think about tone as you would consider an outfit. What’s going to get you noticed, make you stand out, but – importantly – in the right ways!
Focus
Keeping the focus of your content on your audience’s needs may sound like a simple task, but in practice it can be rather challenging…
Adopting the appropriate backchannels and platforms for effectively communicating with users means understanding them.
By regularly and consistently interacting with audiences, both prospective and current, in a focussed way, companies are able to establish deep connections that buttress brand loyalty over time.
Reach
Part of developing a truly effective social media strategy through content marketing is knowing where to look to scale your audience.
Utilising a multi-channel approach can help you improve the reach of your message by targeting demographics based on platform.
Sounds simple, right? Well it is and it isn’t.
Each platform comes with its own set of user interaction dos and don’ts. Long form comments may work with Meta but TikTok users are looking for something a little leaner, more compact; YouTube may be exactly the sort of place for a deep-dive on your latest product, but Instagram may be looking more for a quick sum-up to match the flow of your audience’s journey through the app.
Learning these nuances can enable you to scale your audience and increase your overall reach.
Analysing and Adjusting Your Social Media Content Approach
So how do you go about amending what you’re already doing?
It all starts with an honest appraisal of what’s working and what isn’t.
When it comes to working out how best to deliver content that gets results, the first step is always analysis.
Through auditing your existing social media content frameworks, it becomes possible to optimise or scrap elements of your overall strategy accordingly.
Now that might mean taking an entirely new direction with your brand’s design, or it may mean altering the narrative so that it best aligns with your overall vision.
Whatever the change, properly evaluating content gaps, sensitive topic areas, or outdated design is a critical step towards writing the recipe for perfect content.
All that’s left after is the fun stuff.
Tools and Resources for Social Media Content Creation
Convinced yet?
Yeah, we thought you might be.
That’s why we’ve put together a few tools that will help get you on your way towards better social media content creation:
Miro
Where better to start than a brainstorming tool for coming up with the ideas in the first place?
Miro offers a simple yet super proficient whiteboard tool that allows you to design mock-ups, build mind maps, create task lists and, most importantly, organise all of your fabulous ideas all in one place.
Filestage
Collaboration is at the core of what Filestage can offer.
With content review and approval functions, this tool enables your team to have a say on the content that gets put out there – creating consistency and reliability through efficient feedback loops.
Now that’s helpful.
Easil
Similar to other apps out there, such as Canva, Easil is user-friendly and beautifully simple in its layout.
Specialising in aesthetic graphics, this tool offers much in the way of functionality when it comes to picture-laden platforms such as Instagram.
Maintaining an Effective Social Media Presence
In fewer words then, building, expanding, and maintaining an effective social media presence involves effectively utilising content marketing in a way that is tonally appropriate, contextually fresh, and authentically you.
Gone are the days of producing an ad for every product and leaving it at that.
Today’s digital information age, saturated in the repetitive noise of your competitors, begs for consistently fresh and refreshingly authentic content production – created to service your truth, and published to connect and engage with the people out there who’ll resonate with it.
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