Blog post by: Em von der Ruhr, Baer Performance Marketing Intern
If you’re looking to grow your social media following for your business, you might be wondering what the most effective ways are to draw your target audience in, and not just that, but keep drawing them in. Anyone can create content, but establishing a purpose for your content is the challenging part. This week, we are bringing you our top tips for creating engaging content for your business’s social media pages.
Tip Number One: Identify Purposeful Goals
Start with identifying what your goals are. What is the goal of using a specific platform, or the goal of a post? In order for followers to understand the purpose of your posts, you must understand the purpose first. Are you hoping to create a post that is a call to action? Are you asking the audience to do something specific after viewing your social media post, such as follow a link, share, donate, or buy a product? How about promoting a new product and searching for customer feedback? Deliberately planning out what the highlights, benefits, and various features of what your social media is promoting improves the level of understanding and engagement online.
Tip Number Two: Keep it Simple
Once you have identified your goals, the next step is putting them into action. Your goals should be simple for customers to understand and follow. If your goal is to step by step explain the benefits of your product or teach your audience how to use it, it should be simplified as much as possible. You don’t want to deter customers because of a bad case of the “too-long-didn’t-read.” Also, if your post only requires the act of one or two clicks, followers will be more likely to complete your call-to-action goal.
Tip Number Three: Force Your Audience to Think
You’ve probably already heard the advice “just be original” when it comes to creating engaging content. The next step is creating content that is not only original, but thought provoking. You can connect your social media posts to popular culture, use jokes or memes, or even share details of daily life followers can relate to. As a business, when you ask your audience to think in this way, you become more relatable to them. Thought-provoking content also encourages more comments and shares.
Tip Number Four: Create Intriguing Headlines
Although it seems obvious, the outcome of engaging and interactive content on social media is somewhat dependent on an intriguing headline. A clickable catch line, title, or headline for your website, social media channels, or search engine results can be all it takes to hook a customer.
Don’t give too much away in your headline, then there would be no reason to click on it. At the same time, don’t dumb it down to make it boring, or people will arrive at the same conclusion: no reason to click. An element of thought-provoking content is applicable for your headlines too; make them think enough that they are intrigued to click and go deeper into your company’s website.
Tip Number Five: Stir Your Content Pot
Our final tip for engaging content is to mix things up. Don’t feel committed to a specific formula or mold for your posts. Your business will become predictable and therefore less engaging. Get your audience excited about new products, services or events. Share stories and create content that allows followers to be interactive beyond just the use of comment sections. For example, use Reels and Stories to create surveys, multiple choice questions, bar ratings, Q&As, and more. The beautiful thing about marketing via social media is that it can take any form you want, whether that be promoting products/services, cracking relatable jokes, highlighting blog posts, or sharing personal stories.
The Breakdown:
Allow yourself to really get creative and think outside of the box when it comes to developing social media content for your business. You want to stand out from the crowd, not just by what your business is selling, but how it intrigues and grabs a prospect’s attention. Establishing what your business goals are for your social media platforms will make it clear to your audience what you are posting about. It also makes it much easier to simplify your posts, create effective headlines, and develop thought-provoking content. For more free knowledge to help your business and its social media channels, subscribe to our weekly newsletter and check out Baer Performance Marketing on social media!
Sources:
https://www.quicksprout.com/tips-to-create-highly-engaging-content/
https://www.outbrain.com/help/advertisers/engaging-content/
