Social media is no longer a luxury, it has become a necessity, a platform for businesses to engage and interact with prospective customers. Despite the fact that there are no “rules” to follow when creating social media content, some patterns must be avoided as they jeopardize the businesses instead of helping them.

Here’s what you should do:

1. Test New Strategies

The social media landscape is constantly changing with the addition of new platforms, formats, and features. In order to keep up with the latest trends and find what works on social media, you need to constantly test various tactics.

Social media is an ever-evolving platform, and what works today may not work tomorrow. That’s why you should constantly test your social media strategy. Testing includes trying out different content and strategies to see what performs best through a series of experiments.

When you identify the content that does not work, you ditch it and create better content that resonates with the target audience. Producing the right content increases your reach and engagement and leads to more conversions and sales.

2. Create personalized content

Personalized marketing focuses on targeting specific content to the people who will find it most relevant. Personalized marketing, also known as one-to-one marketing, is when a business tailors a marketing message to an individual based on information the company collects, such as purchase history, interests and demographic data. It is unlike traditional marketing, which targets a wide range of customers with broad messaging tactics. Have you watched “Better than us” lately on Netflix? Or Bruce Willis’ 1997 movie the 5^th element? If you did! Remember the scenes where the officer appeared as a pop-up video notification calling Bruce using his name and data? That’s exactly the type of personalized content we are talking about. The good news is that this specific technology is now available for real! And you can use it exclusively through a company called Digital Scope MENA that represents it in Middle East region…HELLO FUTURE!           

3. Post consistently

If you go weeks between posts, it's unlikely that your audience is seeing your message frequently enough for it to be memorable and make an impact. To be consistent in the tone used in social media messages, you must first understand the who and when. Consistency in the way you communicate online can allow people to recognize your voice in the same way you recognize your friend’s voice when they say “hello” over the phone. Posting consistently helps increase brand awareness, gives you more opportunities to rank in search engine results, leads to better conversion rates and encourages brand loyalty.

4. Create a connection with your followers

People don’t use social networks for a one-way experience. They look for that connection, with the people and the brand. Customers expect you to engage especially when it comes to support. People love interacting with the humans, the real people behind the brand and customer advocacy would increase by 25% when the brand for example answers a complaint.

5. Diversify your posts

The default post type that unimaginative firms publish is the product post, it is to make every post an advertisement, however that will not build up your audience especially that lack of engagement drives social networks’ algorithms to make your posts almost invisible to your followers. That does not mean you should stop promoting your products! But diversification is necessary. Vary your posts between the engagement posts, the competitions, the news, the screenshots, infographics, behind-the-scenes, videos, questions, interactive posts, UGCs and livestreams.

6. Monitor your best-performing posts

Marketers are expected to create content that grabs their audiences’ attention amidst a pool of competitor content; creating attention-grabbing content starts by understanding which of your posts drive the most engagement. This ultimately makes your life easier as a marketer as you figure out which types of content to create and recreate.

Metrics that help you check your best-performing posts/content are as follows:

• Reach & impressions
• Audience growth & engagement rate
• Virality rate
• Video views & video completion rate
• CTR (clickthrough rate) & conversion rates
• Social sentiment
• Share of Voice
• CPM (cost per mille) & CPC (costper-click)

 

Here’s what you shouldn’t do:

1. Don’t steal content from other pages

Social media content creation is the basis of every social media strategy. Without content, there is nothing to post, like, share, or engage with and it would be impossible to promote products or services online.

Social media content ranges from a catchy caption, to an attractive design to that “influencer effect”. Be unique, don’t steal other people’s content, be creative, come up with your OWN amazing ideas. And if you feel that you’re not brilliant enough today, there’s nothing wrong with seeking AI (artificial intelligence) help. There is plenty of ai software that can give you ideas to kick-off your ideas stream again. But again, don’t completely rely on them. Here are some simple steps to help you with content creation:

• Do your research
• Brainstorm with others
• Build a calendar
• Schedule your posts
• Diversify content

2. Don’t expect immediate results

When social media started to become a trend more than 10 years ago, it was designed to connect with friends and family. But, businesses saw they could capitalize on it to reach customers and increase sales. If you’re thinking it was easier back then, you’re right. In today’s crowded social media space, those instant amazing results won’t happen. That’s why you should shift from only selling to optimizing your customer journey, win the crowds, with of course the help of, personalized content and finally convert that content into profit.

3. Keep it real

Be real with your offers. No hidden tricks. Data from Sprout Social reveals that 91% of consumers believe social can connect people, and 78% want brands to use social to bring them together. Unlike partisan public figures, brands find themselves uniquely positioned to foster connections between people online.

Being real and creating authentic content can forge a deeper connection with customers. Keep your social media presence real, let your brand speak for itself through real moments. Being genuine is a vital part of connecting with followers as consumers seek authentic experiences and hold brands accountable for their content. Brands should be true to their values and brand voice, communicate openly and honestly with customers and be responsible for their actions.

4. Don’t be overly promotional

Here comes the 80/20 rule again! It indicates that 80% of social media posts should be useful to your audience (educate, entertain, solve problems) — and only 20% should explicitly promote your business. Don’t bombard your audience with promotions, and you don’t necessarily follow the 80-20 rule, but as mentioned before, diversify your content, or else…. Your followers will run!

5. Don’t overuse trends

When it comes to trends, use wisely, and use what your brand needs and what suits it. Implementing every upcoming trend, whatever it is, will do you bad more than it will do you good. Integrate multi-sensory media in your content (Multi-sensory media is the integration of different formats such as audio, video, text and even fully-immersive environments) however know what to use and when. Are you excited about metaverse brand activations? Because we definitely are.

6. Don’t sell before you engage

Content becomes valuable when it adds something positive to people’s lives. It could make them laugh, teach them something new or inspire them. Engage first then sell.

Educate: Share your knowledge!

Engage: Start a conversation!

Entertain: Make them want to share!

Inspire: Make them want to take action!

Engage first then sell.

 

At Crystal - Translation & Content Creation, we help you with your content creation in multiple languages, we guide you through the do’s and don’ts and let you engage and then sell.

Contact us now for social media content creation, transcreation and SEO-optimized translation.