How to develop a social media content strategy

To every consultant/coach/entrepreneur reading this, I know you are on social media… With all that happened in the past months, I am sure you are on social media.

Not sure if you know this but if you are on social media, you need to have a social media strategy and with it comes a content strategy. These two are like sisters.

You cannot get the best out of the various social media platforms if you are not creating content on a consistent basis.

My question to you is, do you have a content strategy? How do you plan on consistently putting out valuable content to your audience? Do you even have an idea of the content or you will just go about guessing?

Below, I am sharing with you three important tips to note when developing an effective content strategy.

  1. Know what your customers, audience or community want to talk about and be willing to engage in those conversations.
  2. know where your audience wants to have these conversations; in other words, where they “hang out” online. Is your audience on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn.
  3. Measure the results of your conversations to see which ones catch fire. Come up with a proof of concept.

Let’s discuss them in detail

1. Know Your Audience’s Pain Points

Developing a content strategy often starts with identifying the pain points of your ideal client. What is keeping your ideal client up at night awake? What raises their blood pressure? What makes them nervous? And what language do they use while describing that problem?

Get more details on this in my online course for consultants. Schedule for a strategy call here and I’ll get you enrolled.

2. Know where Your Audience Hangs Out

There are numerous social media platforms and new ones are still being created up till today. My question to you is, do you need to be on all of them in order to run a successful business?

Let’s say you are just starting out and you’re a one man’s ship, can you take on that pressure and still serve your clients?

Once you have a general sense of what’s important to your audience, you need to determine where to have these conversations. Most businesses, non-profits and individuals would best be served by focusing on one or two platforms… going deep rather than going broad to start.

Where your audience is can depend on their age and gender, as well as your offerings. There are plenty of statistics that break down social media sites by demographics.

LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for B2B (business to business) companies. Facebook does well for B2C (business to consumer) offerings. Blogs and online video-sharing sites like YouTube can work for any audience, but may be blocked by corporate firewalls.

3. Measuring the Results

When you share your content on social media, you need to measure the impact of your conversations to see if you’re making headway. I recommend—at least at the beginning—to keep this as simple as possible. Some suggestions:

  • Track how many comments and Likes your Facebook post gets.
  • Track monthly how many followers, retweets and mentions you or your brand gets.
  • Measure how many comments your blog posts get and how much traffic they receive.
  • Measure social media referral traffic to your website; in other words, how much traffic is sent from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn?

Now is the time to get very practical… If you didn’t get any of the above don’t miss these last few tips.

5 years ago, I decided to take my business online so, I came up with a social media content strategy. When I implemented this strategy… it grew my business by over 40% and positioned me as the expert in my space.

Below are tested tips on creating a strong social media content strategy.

  1. Be very clear which platforms you plan on sharing your content. Are you zeroing in on all of them or just a few of them. Choose what works best for your business.
  2. Be clear about the goals you want to achieve from putting out content on social media. Do you want website traffic, or increase followers, or make sales, or increase engagement on posts.
  3. Be clear about your posting schedule. How often do you plan on sharing content? Once a week, once a month or daily.

As you come up with your schedule keep in mind that content is king and it will position you as the expert.

  1. Be clear on what form of content you will be producing. Is it video or blogs or short articles or info-graphics.
  2. Draw up a calendar and follow it to the dot. I have a calendar with the times, the type of content and the social media platform and this calendar is followed to the dot. Remember consistence is key when building your social media presence.
  3. Engage… remember there are people on the other side of your laptop so, when they engage with your posts, be ready to engage back.
  4. Be personal in your communication. When creating your content, assume you are talking to one person which indeed you are and create content just for them. If you are personal in your communication, you will get better results from your content.
  5. Have a plan on how you plan to produce the content and always produce it way before the actual day of posting. If its a video, shoot it before and have it transcribed.

If creating content seems too much, you can always outsource.

9. Present your human side with photos. Be ready to have your photos out there on your content. Always remember that people do business with people they trust. The more often people see your face out there, it will increase your credibility and build trust with your audience.

10. Create content that your audience is looking for. What keeps your audience awake? What makes them nervous? Create content that solves their problem and they will always be looking out for your content on social media.

Hope this short article will be of great assistance as you get started on social media .

And if you are reading this and you really want to crush it when it comes to selling things on social media, you really need to invest deeply in creating a firm strong foundation so you can:

  • Discover Who your dream customer is. ($$$),
  • Pick The Most Profitable Niche,
  • understand your ideal customer avatar and their real desires and problems, Who is the type of person that needs what you have to offer the most?

If you want to give your online consulting business a competitive advantage, Schedule a free strategy call with Coach Phill

During the free call, Coach Phill will help break down and analyse your online business strategy and how you can optimize it for better results

Click here to schedule your free business strategy call with coach phill