INSIGHTS

Now we’ve all been there, haven’t we? You’ve listened to the social media marketing experts (including ourselves!) telling you that ‘content is king’ and that to attract new followers and raise awareness of your business to a wider audience, you need to have a strong online presence, post lots of winning content mixing funny, engaging, entertaining and educational content daily!

No pressure then!

So where do you start?

Whether you want to create a series of written blogs to direct people to your website for information or create videos to share on Youtube, or you’re ready to start creating fun and entertaining reels for Instagram to reach and grow your following, when it comes to creating new content there really is only one place to start…structure and planning.

Structuring your content

Content pillars (content topics or buckets) are the backbone of your content creation strategy and will help you find and drill down on your niche. Defining 3-5 pillars will help you to come up with ideas for each pillar, keep consistent in the content you create and schedule your content evenly so it always adds value for your audience and stops your feed from becoming too sales-y and repetitive.

5 tips for creating content

Here are my top tips for creating a content strategy that will grow your audience and drive more sales:

1. 1. Find 3-5 topics (or pillars) that your brand will consistently discuss and that includes your niche. i.e. your products, services, advice, what makes you better than your competitors and stick to creating content specifically around these 3-5 topics.

2. 2. Create a document with separate sections for each content pillar. Each month, set time aside to add new ideas under each pillar. Don’t worry about all the details just yet, just bullet points at this stage will do.

3. 3. Use each content pillar to strategically build out your content calendar for the month ahead. Think about the purpose of each piece of content – ie what pain point could it address for your audience or will it add value and how?

3. 3. Take your list of content ideas and break them down into different content types and formats that you can share across different digital and social media platforms.

      • • Think about creating content in written form, ie a blog or an article.
      • • Develop how-to guides that your audience can download in a PDF format or an eBook
      • • Turn your written content into live videos, reel or event a series of podcasts.
      • • Infographics are a very popular way to show stats and figures. In fact, infographics are shared 3 x more often than other content types on social media
      • • Case studies and testimonials are really valuable and a great way to showcase how you have helped a customer/client and how you solved a challenge they were facing.
      • • And don’t forget the power of email marketing. By creating a weekly or monthly newsletter in an email marketing tool like MailChimp, you can promote and sell your products and services.

5. 5. Finally, don’t overlook your insights and analytics to discover what content was the most engaging with your audience. Which content was shared the most and saved. For these pieces of content, think about reworking these into ‘evergreen’ content (content that doesn’t have an expiration date and becomes obsolete) adapt for different platforms and share again!

Want to learn how to come up with new content ideas and build a solid content plan for your business? Get in touch with me at carol@creativehutch.com.