Following our last article on improving social media channels, we decided to go into more detail on types of social media content to drive engagement and leads.
Not all content is created equally, we’ve all seen pages that seem to share the same repetitive uninteresting posts over and over, no one wants to go down that road.
Company News
One of the most obvious types of content to share is recent company news, updates on Holiday hours, new locations, new ways to buy etc, all of these are things that your current customers would probably like to know as they continue doing business with you.
Education
One of the best ways to build an audience, whether on youtube, or your blogs, etc is via educational content that would be of interest to your audience. This requires some experimentation with what your audience likes and engages with, but for example, if you are a law firm – creating a youtube channel covering popular legal cases or common questions would be a great way to build an audience.
Write out a list of topics that might be of interest to your audience and start by creating several. While it’s important you don’t give up if they don’t immediately catch you, after 3-6 months, you’ll have a pretty good feel for
Industry News
Relevant industry current events shared articles by industry publications and news websites are great ways to keep your audience coming back to your page. These can be highly shared and viewed posts, and require less time spent creating them than other types of content. For B2B firms in particular, industry news is highly important and can be used as a way to start a conversation about the products and services that you offer.
Special Offers
Sales and promotions are generally a very common type of post, whether you’re a restaurant, car dealership, plumbing company, or sell a physical product, promotions can create huge demand on products. It’s important to plan your promotions and sales events well beforehand, and the only share offers that are actually good. We’ve all seen certain companies that offer near-perpetual sales, yet the offers are not enticing enough or simply stay the same month after month.
Giveaways and Contests
A popular to build engagement amongst your audience is to start giveaway events and contests, offer gift cards or other items as a prize. Clearly think through how you will run the contest or giveaway, but in the most basic form, it requires audiences members to comment or share posts in order to be entered.
A number of individual posts can be created from one contest or giveaway, which can help maximize the return on the time and expense to run the event. For example, you can make a post announcing the giveaway, another post on how to enter, then another post kicking it off, a post announcing it’s over, and a post announcing the winner. Many brands use this type of contest as a starting point then add their own twist on it.
Sneak Peaks at new things
For companies that make physical products or software, this is a great way to not only drive engagement from your own audience but also get coverage from industry new sources.
Great examples of this include how movie and game studios tease content well before even a full movie or game trailer is released, and how car manufacturers will tease obscured photos that show off a tiny piece of a new car without giving away the entirely new design.
Depending on your industry, these can be some of the viewed posts you create. Physical product firms and restaurants also can use social media posts in this format to tease new dishes and offerings.
Behind the Scenes
Being relatable to your customers and having your brand be more than just a faceless business is a powerful tool to build better relationships and increase sales.
Sharing videos or even static posts about your employees is an effective way to being more relatable. Certainly for businesses and positions that customers would come in contacts with, such as a service manager or sales team member at a car dealership is a strong way to personify the business.
Another variation on this style of posts is to share how you make what you offer. If you are a restaurant, share the occasional post on how you make the dough for your rolls or the prep that goes into a recipe. If you make physical products or software, show your audience glimpses of the amount of effort it takes to make what you offer. Often this will reinforce the quality of your offerings and reinforce that price point.
Sharing the care and effort that goes into making what you offer is also a way to be more transparent about the quality and consistency of what you make. For food-related businesses, this can show how you are careful to only use organic and high-quality ingredients.
Customer Reviews/Testimonials
Sharing testimonials, whether video content, written reviews or links to a customer review, is a great way to solidify your reputation with your audience and demonstrate the quality of service and products that you offer.
Testimonials in video form have become increasingly popular and can include why the customer make the purchasing decision that they did, and what their experience has been like.
Guest Content
Inviting someone from another company or organization, or an industry influencer to create a piece of content can be used as a way to have more fresh, and different content posted.
This can also result in an SEO boost, due to the backlinks from the other organization that would be typically also be sharing the content they helped make.
Many times, as part of the agreement, you’d create a piece of guest content for the other organization as well.
Influencer content, even at a local level can be a strong source of views and shares. Just be careful to think through how much this could cost, and if the influencer’s audience is demographically likely to become a customer of yours.
Micro-influencers which could be less popular influencers that have a lot of followers at a local level can still be effective and are becoming more of a trend.
So How much does Social Media Content creation cost?
Now that you have a number of different types of social media content and posts you can make, what type of budget is needed to actually create them?
The answer is that it really depends. If you are already social media savvy and have a feel for what your customer wants, you can probably create a lot of it yourself.
As your brand grows you might find it is a better use of your time to work with social media agencies to plan, create and manage your pages. Pricing for this can vary anywhere from $500 a month to tens of thousands per month depending on the amount and type of content.
For example, shooting and editing professional video testimonials will be more expensive than sharing reviews from your website, but it likely would also be more engaging and result in more traction.
If you’re a small to medium-sized business, typically someone within your organization or even a few people on your team can split up the duties of your social media management and keep the budget down while building a larger social media following.
One of the most important points to conclude, is that consistency, variety, and quality are the most important focal points for building social media content.
You need to post consistently with a variety of high-quality posts! This doesn’t mean you need to post every day, or spend thousands on custom animated videos each month, but it does mean that your audience will get bored and uninterested if you don’t post regularly or if you post the same type of content all the time.
For example, sharing a static text customer review 4 days in a row is not the best strategy for cultivating a social media following.
Should you boost posts?
Typically we recommend that your paid budget is better spent on content creation or actual PPC campaigns rather than sponsoring a post. That being said, there are situations where sponsored posts make sense, particularly if you already have a large following and want certain posts to reach a broader audience.
Sponsored posts will put views on videos, but generally, it won’t result in as many sales as using more traditional PPC campaigns even with a site like Facebook.
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