“You need to create ridiculously good content – content that is useful, enjoyable and inspired” – Ann Handley, Digital Marketing and Content Expert.

I agree with Ann. However, creating ridiculously good content is easier said than done.

How To Create Engaging Social Media Content
Your audience’s perception of your business or brand online greatly relies on the social content you share.

For this reason, taking the time to produce content that would appeal to your target audience should be a major practice to consider.

Many business decisions rely on who your customers are.

Crafting a smart social content strategy around them will make you take one step further and could prevent your business from randomly posting links and articles, or crafting content that wouldn’t be interesting for potential customers.

Let’s see how you can create good social media content:

Who Are You Trying to Reach?
Similar to SEO, social media is in constant growth.

Simply setting up accounts and following an outdated content strategy wouldn’t let you follow updated algorithms or trending topics within your niche.

As of 2019, some of the channels with the most MAUS (Monthly Active Users) to use depending on your niche are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Others include Tumblr, Snapchat, Pinterest and more.

Each platform has a different demographic, they also have unique features to offer.

Understanding who your audience is, where they are and what they’re expecting to see on social channels are three essential elements for you to create and distribute content.

Alright… So what are you supposed to do with this information?

A good modality to follow is not making assumptions.

Up-to-date social media statistics and analytics provide useful, accurate information for you to work with, from there, you can start making reasonably accurate guesses on who your target customer is, based on research and information.

Pro-tip: A few target market tools such as Facebook Audience Insights and Google Trends could help you narrow down your business’s ideal social media persona to direct to.

Creating a persona is a great way of defining who you’re trying to reach exactly, and how you’ll try to do it. Having a clear idea of who your ideal customer is will allow you to get a better picture and easily spot them in the places they hang out online.

Up next, I’ll share with you three slick tactics to track down your ideal community members on social platforms:

1. Review audience behavior
This is convenient when you aren’t starting from scratch and already have some content spread through different platforms. Evaluate user behavior on shared content using the analytics tools on each network.

In the above example, it’s clear that for this Facebook Page, posts that contain videos and images have been getting more attention compared to posts with no visual content.

To check this yourself go to your Page’s Insights → Posts → Post types.

2. Investigate who engages with your (direct) competitors
Identify the social media profiles of the competitors that offer the same products or services your business does, or that (at least!) share a noticeable similarity.

Think about it. If they’re thriving with their social strategy, you could as well.

A few questions to ask yourself at this point are: Who are they following and trying to market to? Which networks show the highest engagement? And others, depending on the necessary details you want to obtain.

3. Use social listening
To discover potential customers, and where your current customers are, monitor discussions associated with your target keywords, topics relevant to your business, and even your competitor’s interactions.

Twitter’s advanced search feature is a useful resource for monitoring brand mentions, competitors, and keywords and phrases important to your business.

Absorb as much as you can from the data. Read users’ bios (see their gender, perhaps find their professions, or favorite hobby, for example), see the conversations and interactions they have to know what they like (and whatnot), what they care about, etc.

What Makes Your Business Stand Out?
Brand authenticity is the key to a business that aims to differentiate itself from competitors. Establishing a brand voice and setting clear core values is extremely important for your social media strategy at all stages, including content writing, designing, posting and responding.

To gain insight into this, let’s say we’re working with a fashion brand whose selling proposition is offering environmentally-friendly clothing suitable for use by vegetarians on a global level.

Sounds pretty specific… Right? That’s good! Now, let’s review a few of their (fictional) core values:

They’re committed to enrich and not exploit people or nature by supporting ethical and sustainable practices.
They like making things differently, somehow breaking the mold and having a strong voice heard to stand out from the crowd.

4. Keeps Your Audience Engaged
Sometimes, you can indeed wing it, but that’s not a method that will work in the long run. When you’re in a hurry to publish something, you might fail to check if it’s a repetitive topic covered beforehand.

Similarly, randomly picked topics that don’t resonate with your audience also hurt your engagement. However, a planned social media content calendar will allow you to spot such blunders, so you only publish fresh and relevant content.

5. Crucial for Staying in the Know
With such a hectic daily routine, it’s very easy for some important dates to slip your mind. You don’t have to memorize every holiday and be aware that tomorrow is, say, Canadian Thanksgiving Day.

Your content calendar, which is planned at least a month in advance, will inform you about that in time to prepare blogs, social media, and promo posts, so you stay ahead of the curve.

Needless to say, this approach reduces stress and allows you to take your time and craft the best possible post for the occasion instead of whipping something up at the last minute.

6. Provides Visibility Across Departments
Successful companies have their sales and marketing aligned. Stats reveal that when working together, these two departments can close 67% more deals.

A social media content calendar is a highly useful resource that will keep all your teams on the same page. Your sales team can see what the marketing people have planned and give them tips on addressing their audience’s pain points more precisely.

Also, the executives can take a quick look and see whether the planned activities support the overall marketing plan. This transparency is essential for honing your content strategy and improving communication among teams.

7. Executes Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
Content and social media marketing are intrinsically connected. A social media content calendar can help you identify your successful content pieces and use them in your paid social media advertising.

Find out your best-performing e-books, reports, infographics, whitepapers, and other valuable content organically on social media channels. Then use them for paid promotion via Facebook ads, Instagram ads, or LinkedIn-sponsored content to get your message across to your audience.

Given that organic reach on Facebook took a nosedive, meaning that your business page reaches less than 6% of your followers, it’s more than evident why paid advertising is a must.

Interesting Read: 4 Tips for Creating a Successful B2B Social Media Strategy

8. Keeps Track of Your Performance
Measuring the effectiveness and success of your content and overall marketing efforts is possible only if you track your metrics.

Also, establishing certain benchmarks is necessary. By keeping an eye on these numbers, you’ll be able to tweak and fine-tune your content and give your audience what they need and want.

It’s worth noting that many renowned digital marketing agencies recommend building a social media content calendar. If you take a look at their websites, blogs, and social media channels, you can conclude that they have one themselves.

Planning A Social Media Content Calendar
Creating and planning content for any sort of platform takes a lot of time and attention to detail. But formulating and strategizing for social media content, specifically, is a different story altogether. When we get to the social media content calendar, some critical factors which come into play are

• Goals of each campaign listed with crystal clarity
• Details of the specific social media platforms you are targeting
• Prime times and days you aim to post on
• Call to actions being used
• Link to the creatives and visual content
• Empty slots for ad-lib posting
• The distribution of the posts in a specified timeline
• Advanced content plans for the whole month
• Segregation based on different content types