Long gone are the days when Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were just for fun and posting snaps from your vacation, cat memes, or your new favorite earworm. Now, social media doubles as a search engine.
More than 60% of Instagram users leverage the platform to research brands and products, while 70% don’t mind seeing ads when watching videos. At the same time, YouTube has become the second largest search engine, right behind Google.
These stats make a strong case for building your social media presence. And the only way to achieve this goal is to delight your followers with some seriously engaging content.
Here are some tips to capture your audience’s attention and get them to visit your profile regularly.
1. Go the Extra Mile with Visuals
Engaging content is educational, relevant, and entertaining. But, with fleeting attention spans and content oversaturation, it’s challenging to actually get social media users’ attention.
They’re endlessly scrolling their newsfeed and swiping through photo galleries, a behavior that triggers the brain’s reward center and dopamine release. The odds are your text-based posts won’t get noticed because your audience pauses only when they notice something enticing enough, and that’s usually an eye-catching visual — a photo, video, or infographic.
In other words, this type of snackable content is a perfect match for social media’s fast pace.
Visuals are powerful tools to capture and retain the interest of your audience. They can convey complex information in a simple and appealing way, evoke emotions and reactions, and increase the likelihood of generating shares and engagement. Most importantly, visual content will help you stand out in crowded social media news feeds.
Having said that, it should be emphasized that average visuals won’t cut it. You need something that will jump off the page and give your followers a reason to click on the post. Even if you don’t have resources for professional high-quality visuals, you can find pretty decent photos on stock image websites. Just make sure you customize them for your brand by picking the ones with your color palette or adding your logo. Some of those websites allow you to search images by hex codes.
Canva is a great example of a brand that creates visual content tailored to social media — attractive, easily digestible, and educational. Their Instagram profile is packed with visuals that aren’t just eye candy, as the brand also incorporates bite-sized tips and tricks in their visuals to help their customers create amazing designs.
Source: Instagram
2. Post Frequently and Reliably
When we’re talking about wowing your followers with high-quality, engaging social media content, there’s another factor to consider — your posting frequency.
By sticking to a consistent posting schedule, you’ll be able to:
- Build trust and credibility with your audience.
When you post consistently, you show your followers that you are reliable, professional, and committed to providing them with valuable content.
Besides, if your potential customers check out your social media profile and notice inactivity periods, they can assume you’re hard to reach, which can scare them away from ordering your products or services. Similarly, not having fresh posts on your social media channels is not a good sign. It will make your followers wonder whether your company is still operating.
- Increase your visibility, reach, and engagement.
Posting frequently and regularly increases the chances of your content being seen by more people. That’s especially the case if you optimize your posts for the best times and days to post on each platform. More exposure means more likes, comments, shares, and clicks, translating into more traffic, leads, and sales for your business.
Don’t forget that social media algorithms, hardwired to provide users with the best, most interesting, and relevant content, work in favor of accounts that follow a regular schedule and post more frequently. That’s how you’ll make sure your content pops up on your followers’ feeds often, keeps them engaged, and stays top of mind.
If we take a look at the MarketBeat YouTube channel, you will see that the brand has been posting a steady stream of videos and amassed quite a comprehensive library of relevant resources. Potential customers can immediately rest assured that the company goes above and beyond to add value, and this approach communicates the message, “We’re here to help.”
Source: YouTube
3. Create Seasonally Appropriate Content
For businesses, holidays mean profit.
The latest stats show that the total U.S. retail sales reached $1.297 trillion during the 2022 holiday season.
Be it Valentine’s Day, Easter, Thanksgiving Day, or Christmas, people are in the mood to open their wallets, and you should be there for it by drumming up the holiday spirit with your social media content in advance.
Seasonal content can help you boost your engagement and conversions by tapping into the interests and needs of your audience at the right moment. This means you should align your posts with the current events, holidays, trends, and seasons relevant to your customers and your niche. Doing so can make your social media content more timely and topical and capitalize on all the excitement.
Focl goes beyond posting photos of star-spangled banners and fireworks on their Instagram. Instead, their 4th of July content speaks to the segment of their target audience worried about their four-legged companions’ fear of loud noises and bright flashes. The brand posted this quote by a happy customer ten days before the holiday itself and offered a solution to the problem many pet parents face during the Independence Day festivities.
Source: Instagram
Similarly, besides celebrating big and popular holidays, Starbucks also doesn’t forget about usually underrepresented parts of their community, such as Latinx or people with disabilities. This welcome twist on the traditional holiday tropes allows the brand to connect with diverse audiences and engage them.
Source: Instagram
4. Publish Useful and Educational Content
Social media content has a twofold role: first and foremost, it should deliver value to your audience while generating interest in your brand. So, it’s crucial to prioritize this customer-centric approach as it will show your followers that you’re not only after their money but that you genuinely want to help them solve their pain points.
You can achieve this by crafting educational content that will answer your followers’ questions, teach them something new, or improve their lives. It’s okay to have a promotional post occasionally, but don’t overdo it.
You can use different formats to deliver your educational content, but infographics and videos lend themselves perfectly to social media and its visually-oriented ways.
Using Infographics
We’ve already mentioned snackability as the ultimate quality of social media content, and that’s exactly what infographics are all about. These visual representations of data, information, or processes can make complex concepts easier to understand and remember. They are great for summarizing key points, highlighting trends, comparing options, or showing steps. No wonder infographics are liked and shared more than any other social media content. Plus, they’re 30 times more likely to be read in their entirety than blog posts or regular articles.
SomniFix mainly leverages informative content in a graphic form to educate their audience on why mouth breathing is dangerous and share valuable tips for overcoming this bad habit. The brand’s Facebook and Instagram channels are a treasure trove of valuable resources, and each of their posts communicates key points concisely and effectively, meaning that the audience doesn’t have to go through lengthy articles in search of the information they need.
Source: Facebook
Using Videos
Video is another powerful tool for educating your audience. Dynamic and engaging, this format allows you to demonstrate how to do something, explain how something works, or show why something matters. Explaining something through articles, written guides, or any other static content can turn into a snooze fest. Video, on the other hand, combines sound, moving images, and text, thus engaging both auditory and visual senses and commanding your audience’s attention.
Grammarly uses educational videos on YouTube to help their users write better. Their Level Up series offers different tips for composing a conclusion. Instead of overwhelming their audience with wordy pieces, the brand condenses the advice into a sweet and short video discussing three simple strategies. Adding timestamps is an additional trick that makes videos even more viewer-friendly and facilitates navigating to specific sections or chapters.
Source: YouTube
5. Establish and Maintain a Consistent Strategy
Establishing and maintaining a consistent strategy is a must for creating effective social media content.
But what does it actually mean? In short, this tactic is about having a clear goal as well as a coherent brand tone, voice, and style for your social media content and sticking to it. Otherwise, you risk confusing your followers and damaging your brand reputation.
Here are a couple of tips to point you in the right direction.
Research Your Audience
Identifying the needs and preferences of your target audience is a crucial step. Without it, you won’t be able to come up with the right goals and objectives for your social media strategy. Find out relevant details about your buyer personas, what type of content they like, which social media channel(s) they use to interact with your brand, and what their biggest pain points are. This will allow you to fine-tune your content accordingly and make it resonate with your followers.
Set Your Goals
Think about what you want to achieve with your social media strategy — boost brand awareness, generate new leads, grow your following — and focus on them. Make sure these goals are measurable and attainable.
Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin
Having an active social media presence doesn’t necessarily mean posting on every single one of them. This is a surefire way to miss the mark and waste valuable resources. Pick the best channels for your business and zero in on them.
Have Brand Guidelines in Place
This set of rules determines how you present your brand on social media and help you create a recognizable brand image across different platforms.
Mannequin Mall checks all the boxes with their consistent social media strategy. Being closely related to the fashion industry, the brand mainly relies on Pinterest to inspire designers and offer creative window display ideas. Thanks to such a persistent approach, Mannequin Mall has built a solid loyal following and amassed 1.2 million monthly profile views.
Source: Pinterest
6. Give Exposure to Your Followers
One of the best and most effective ways of engaging your social media followers is by giving them exposure. When you repost their content and tag them in your own post, you’re showing your appreciation and telling them that they’re an essential part of your brand. It gives them a sense of belonging to a community, and they will reward this with their loyalty to you.
But this isn’t the only benefit of encouraging user-generated content (UGC).
By inviting your customers to create content about your brand or products, you’ll also get social proof and add an extra layer of authenticity to your brand. Even 93% of marketers agree that UGC performs better than the content created by brands.
Last but not least, you get trustworthy and diverse content that showcases your brand from different perspectives and experiences. Your followers get to enjoy the spotlight of being featured on your profile and an opportunity to connect with others who share similar interests and passions — a win-win situation.
Cluse created a hashtag #Cluseclub to encourage their customers to post snaps of themselves wearing the brand’s watches, bags, and other accessories and get more involved in content creation. As a result, Cluse’s Instagram profile looks like a gallery of UGC photos and videos, thus boosting brand credibility and trust.
Source: Instagram
In Closing
At the end of the day, creating engaging social media content boils down to understanding your audience and delivering what they love. High-quality social media content has the power to spark conversations, ignite emotions, stir curiosity, and ultimately help you grow a loyal following. The tips we discussed can go a long way toward reaching this challenging goal and help you connect with your followers in a more meaningful way. Be persistent and make every post count.