November 1, 2017

Why content is crucial when it comes to your social media posts

November 1, 2017

Why content is crucial when it comes to your social media posts

Why content is crucial when it comes to your social media posts

Last month, members of the Bang Digital social media team participated in an exciting digital copywriting workshop aimed at adding value to social media messages through captivating content. With almost 8 in 10 Australians (79%) now on social media for an average of two hours each day, ADMA’s Digital Copywriting Essentials focused on writing in the ever-growing and ever-changing digital space.So how do you engage in social? How do you make the most of this captive audience? The answer is through creative and dynamic content tailored to their specific needs. Read on to find out how your business can benefit from a high-quality social content strategy and our key outtakes from the course.Content adds valueOnline content has one major challenge: the reader is now in charge. Unlike traditional mediums such as TV, radio or print, the reader can choose their own journey through the information. So it’s important to understand how people read a screen, what they want and how they go about hunting it down.Content plays a crucial role in achieving your business and social media objectives. Whether it’s brand recognition, thought leadership, audience engagement or lead generation, content adds the value needed to drive home these objectives. As a result, you’re able to build long-term relationships with your audience and cement your position as a go-to destination for your customers.And not only does well planned content help build trusting relationships with your audience, it also helps support the needs of your business. The best way to achieve this is by ensuring your content reflects the unique perspective of your brand and targets the right type of people who want to hear what your brand has to say in the first place.Target your audienceWith so much information online, getting the attention of your audience can be challenging. To ensure your content is well-received, you need to keep it relevant to your audience. In order to achieve this, you must first ask yourself who you’re trying to target with your content.Creating buyer personas is a vital part of planning your social media presence. It’s one of the best ways to determine the needs, goals and behaviour of your potential customers, which can dictate how you digitally convey a product or service to them. In turn, it can help you understand the voice to use when trying to reach that audience with your content.Some questions to ask yourself when determining who you want to cater your content towards includes:

  • What are they looking for?
  • What motivates them?
  • What’s going to help them?
  • How are they going to feel at a given time of the year?

Identifying your buyer personas’ interests, goals and pain points will not only help you understand the type of audience you need to be targeting - it will shape your content marketing plan.So get specific - find out their age, location, job title, income, most used social network and more. Never before in the history of marketing have we had such targeted access to the public. Leverage this information because even the best content marketing strategies will fail if they’re targeted at the wrong audience.Create a content planThe key tool to achieving your social media marketing goals is a strong content strategy which acts as a plan for coordinating, creating and distributing your business’s content. Working without a plan in place could result in content that’s unbalanced in tone, subject matter and purpose. It will also make understanding the ROI of your content efforts a challenge, as there would no consistent objectives or measurement strategies in place.Use your content strategy as a way to tell a consistent, cohesive story about your brand. A well thought out strategy helps ensure you’ve set attainable goals, determine which types of content you want to post, at what times they’re to be posted and how to distribute your content effectively. Remember, social media is all about simple, chewable content, so make your posts short, to the point and engaging to your target audience.Our main takeaways

  1. Write everything down then edit, edit edit - Keep writing until you have nothing left to say and then switch your approach and start “chipping away at the marble”. Control the reader and only give them one thought per sentence. Be brutal and question every word and if in doubt, chop it out.
  2. Let the reader fill in the blanks - Shorter copy converts 30% while longer copy converts 20%. Emotive stories don’t need to have many words. Take Hemingway, for example, who created this story in six words: Baby shoes for sale. Never worn.
  3. Remember the KISS method - The bigger the words, the dumber we look. So shorten words to one syllable and turn commas and “and” into full stops. The average sentence should be around 16 words, so try to stay around this mark.
  4. Customers are curious so ask questions - Continue to ask questions and make statements that will entice a “yes” answer from your reader. This works when you’re interrupting someone’s life, i.e. in Facebook ads.
  5. Don’t forget about the inverted pyramid - Place the most important information at the beginning and the least important information further down. This works when people have made a choice to come your social media page.
  6. Always proofread your posts - Read it out loud first. Read the last word up as it will force you to take in and understand every single word. Then, have someone else read over it too, as a second opinion never hurts.

At Bang Digital, we have a proven track record for helping our clients succeed in social. For more information about how our passionate and experienced social media marketing team can help you create and curate engaging content, contact us today.