In our new ‘EXPOSED’ series here on the addmustard blog, we will be revealing insider tips and insights from our very own digital marketing experts. This week our focus is on social media, giving you eight tried-and-tested tips for creating truly engaging social media content.

It doesn’t matter whether your social media goals are to gain brand awareness, drive traffic, increase sign ups or to get customers to convert; the key to achieving any of these goals is to create engaging social content. The rest will follow.

 

1. KEEP IT SHORT AND SWEET

Everyone is busy and with the pure volume of content to scroll through on your social feeds every day, no-one has time for long social updates anymore with the average attention span of an internet user only eight seconds (less than a goldfish). Content must be quick and easy to consume. Tweets are limited to 140 characters, but actually 100 is the perfect length of a tweet. Written Facebook content should ideally also be around 90-100 characters.

 

2. BE HUMOROUS, BE INFORMATIVE OR BE EMOTIVE

The key to creating social content that makes people want to hit the share or like button is to make them laugh, learn or get them teary eyed. If you’re really smart, your content could achieve all three of these goals.

 

3. WOULD YOU SHARE IT?

Put yourself in the mind of your target audience. Now be honest, if you saw this post pop up on your newsfeed would you share/like/comment? If the answer is no, get rid of it.

 

4. NO CONTENT IS BETTER THAN POOR CONTENT

If it’s fluffy, if it doesn’t entertain or inform, if it’s content for the sake of filling a schedule then don’t bother. It’s better to spend time working on the perfect post and sending it later than scheduled, than to waste time churning out content that doesn’t hit the mark.

 

5. THE 80/20 RULE

Consumers are smart. They know you are a brand that wants to sell a product. But do they want to be bombarded with sales messages on their social media feeds? If you think the answer is yes then it’s likely your unsubscribe/unfollow rate is rather high. The general rule in social is to make 80% of your content engaging – shoot for likes/shares/comments. Then you can sneak your (relatively discreet) sales messages into the remaining 20%.

 

6. BE PERSONAL, NOT A ROBOT

Followers like to see that you are human, that you are not a machine churning out scheduled content. Be reactive, be personal, keep up with trends and show your followers a bit of personality. From experience, behind the scenes shots and insider info tend to go down a treat!

 

7. TALK WITH, NOT TO

Yes, people may have chosen to follow you because they like your brand, are interested in your products or enjoy your content, however, there’s nothing consumers enjoy more than a response back to their comments. It doesn’t mean you have to respond back to every comment and of course it depends on the size of your business/following as to how frequently you can do so, but if you can show your followers that you are listening and that you care, it will go a long way.

 

8. BE BRAVE, BE DISRUPTIVE

There are over 50 million pages on Facebook, with brands posting on average 1.48 times a day. In order to get your content seen and heard, it has to stand out or you’ll get swallowed up in the noise. Be bold when brainstorming content, push the limits, go big or go home and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. The goal is to get people engaging, get people talking. Of course within reason, within brand guidelines and make sure you get the appropriate sign off. Test, learn and share your results with your senior management to get them on board and because, lets face it, everyone loves a great social media success story.

If you’d like to learn more about how to balance your resources to get the most out of your content strategy, check out our ‘Balancing Your Content Infographic’.