In a previous post, we shared 3 factors that help businesses increase their social media sales with a highlight on the importance of consistency and content. Given that content marketing is one of the most effective ways to increase brand awareness and attract new customers, we put together 5 powerful tips to help you create quality content that will start a conversation between your brand and the customers, and grow your business.

So what do you need to take into consideration when planning your Social Media Content Marketing strategy?

1. Make sure your content has a clear and measurable goal

You may be confused by the variety of content you can create for social media starting with images, carousels, videos, Instagram stories, Reels, TikTok, or even live streaming. Although all these may seem tempting since they allow you to be creative, as a brand, it’s important to set a measurable goal for every content you publish, therefore, you need to take enough time to set your goals and then identify the best content material to achieve it.

For example, if you’re in the launching phase, you need to publish educational content for the followers to learn about your product or service, know how to use it, and help them. At this point, you are more likely to focus on static or video posts that stay on your account more than stories that disappear after 24 hours, however, that doesn’t mean eliminating other content forms.

Finally, you need to closely examine interactions on these posts and keep note of frequently asked questions to use in future posts.

2. Know your target audience

The role of Social Media Content Marketing is to attract the right audience – that is, those who are most likely to interact with your brand and buy your products. However, you can’t write content that attracts the right audience until you know your audience!

You do not need to interview every client you ever dealt with to know your audience better, as tempting as that might seem, it is too time-consuming and may require you to dedicate a staff member to work on only this. Instead, sit down with your team and create a Buyer Persona: the perfect client that your products serve. You will need to take into account both psychological and demographic information and create a Persona document that your team can refer to.

Knowing your audience helps you create social media content that addresses them as they go through the journey of getting to know your product and helps them decide to buy.

3. Know your Customer Journey

A good content marketer realizes that his/her strategy needs to engage and please readers at any stage of the customer journey. While your content should initially attract new visitors to your business, it must also convince potential customers who are still reluctant to buy, encourage customer retention, and build long-term brand loyalty.

For example, some customers may be reluctant to buy your product because they need a confirmation on the quality of the product, to showcase that you may need to create video-based marketing content that shows more details and highlights the quality. As a further step, you may choose to post client reviews or customer experience videos to build trust for those still reluctant.

4. Solve the problem your target audience has

In social media content marketing, you may have two basic objectives: educating on your product and helping someone solve a problem. While the goal is to attract potential customers or drive followers to buy, you also want to make your brand a reliable source of information as well, once you establish more trust this is when your followers would turn into paying customers.

Every piece of content you create must either educate the audience on your product, brand, and market or solve one of the main problems they face.

Let us assume your brand offers vacation rentals for families and solo travelers, your content should be focused on travel and provide the type of information travelers may need. You might write city travel guides for example, or lists of the best places to visit in a given city, or the best practices to travel alone, etc. When your readers know they can always come back to your page as a reliable source of information, they will trust you enough to make you their provider.

5. Repurpose your content

It takes time and talent to create useful and attractive social media content – so, by finding ways to repurpose current content, you can guarantee maximum efficiency and reach new audiences.

A good example of repurposing content is using the content of a successful podcast episode in an organic post or infographic to be posted on the account.

Similarly, a blog that attracted many visitors, could be repurposed into a YouTube video that covers the subject hence reaching those who prefer video over text.

Repurposing content will also ensure that your audience gets more than one chance to see it and perhaps the next time they do they would make a choice to buy.