Have you always wondered if there is a sure way of creating content for social media that people would wait to share?
Yes. There is.
Is there a way to stand out from the tsunami of content that people consume on a daily basis?
Yes. There is.
It all boils down to two simple philosophies that every social media content creator must keep in mind-
- It’s not all about you
- Think within the box
It’s not all about you
This step is inspired from the wonderful book ‘It’s not about you’ by co-authors Bob Burg and John David Mann. Read this book and you will discover the importance of serving the needs of others to find abundance in business as well as life.
In reference to the content you create, thinking about the person you are ideating/writing for helps you understand what they want to learn, read, laugh about or share. Doing this helps you stand out being genuine. Being genuine leads to being talked about.
It’s as simple as that.
Now you know it- Think less about what you want to create, what you think sounds cool, creative or ‘killer’ and think about the person consuming the things you are sharing.
Think within the box!
Now, wait a minute. I know you’ve been told to think out of box, since you could frame sentences in second grade. Thinking creatively is considered a product of thinking out of the regular framework of things. That may be true in some cases. Visualizing for social media is not one of them.
So what is this box and how do you think within said box?
The social media content box consists of 4 pillars, like every other box. But what each of these sides/pillars stand for is important. So listen up.
- Know the product better than the client-
- Know your audience
- Research like your nosy aunty next door
- Create content buckets
Is that even possible? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
Before you start working on your product/service learn everything you can about it. The good, the bad, the ugly. 0
First, start with the client’s brief of what they sell. This gives you a good insight of their perception on how they want to help people. This is important. If you don’t know why our client’s product or service exists, you might as well not get into the content creation bit.
Once you speak to your client and get a basic understanding of the product, the actual research begins.
Get online, talk to people, read news articles, reviews and every other piece of content you find. Read the little writing on the back of the product, if you have to. Do what it takes to know the product/service you are about to tell people about!
Imagine having a brilliant conversation or a date night with a wall. That’s right. If you don’t know who you are talking to on social media, you my friend, are speaking to a wall.
The second pillar of visualizing for social media is rather an important one.
Only when you know who you’re sharing valuable information with will you know if they are interested in your information. So step 1: create a persona of your buyer.
For one particular cooking oil brand that we worked with, we went out to spend endless hours at all the different places our client’s product was being sold. After making notes, talking to people who were picking up our product and shopkeepers selling them, we sat down and created a personality, adding every intricate detail we could fathom. From his language of preference to what newspaper he reads every day, we wrote it. That was the cornerstone of success for their social media page.
Once we learned about our customer, we wasted no time talking to the wrong people.
Today, thanks to Facebook/Instagram Analytics, behavioural recording tools and messenger to talk to people, understanding customer behavior has become a whole lot easy.
That’s right. Just get in there. Spend hours learning about what’s happening in the industry. Learn about your competitors, what they do that makes them awesome, what they say that gets them responses and how they make their customers fall in love with them every day.
Once you get all this data, you now know ‘why’ your product exists for your customer.
Your product/service must have a purpose, it must help someone make their lives a little better, healthier, easier or happier. When you discover this purpose for your product, you know how to share its value to your customers.
So never forget, get to the ‘why’ first. The ‘how’ will follow suit.
Just like you click on that ‘Skip Ad’ button when an ad starts to play at the beginning of your YouTube video, your customers will skip you out of their minds if you keep feeding them sales-y, repetitive content every single day.
So here is the fourth pillar of content visualization- Write down different ways you can talk to your customers, engage with them, provide them entertainment and value. These are called content buckets. Knowing who you’re talking to will help you create these ideas.
It can be a fun game, a throwback, behind-the-scenes, videos on how your product is made, reviews, recipes and so much more. Everything that can help tell your products’ story better and more effectively, make it a bucket.
And guess what…. You just visualized content for your client’s social media page!
Congratulations and good luck!
Let me know how it works out for you in the comments