When it comes to social media, knowing what to post can be hard! And nothing is more frustrating than putting in the work of posting consistently only to get crickets back. If your posts aren’t getting the engagement you hoped for, you can guarantee your content isn’t valuable to your audience. In other words, it isn’t speaking their language.
But what is valuable content and how do you go about creating it? Below are six tips to help you create valuable content and revamp your social media presence.
1. Define YOUR audience
The first step in creating valuable content is clearly defining your target audience. If you don’t know who you’re speaking to, there is no way that your content will be effective. What is considered interesting, engaging, and helpful is different from person to person. Defining your audience will allow you to curate content that is valuable to them.
Once you know who your audience is, make your content about them. We often focus on us – our products, our business, our services. Turn it around and post with your audience in mind. What does your audience or client struggle with? For example, if your target audience is a young mom with baby number three on the way, she may be wrestling with needing more space but having a tight budget. Take this struggle and give her a solution by sharing five tips for finding a home that you can grow into. What is going to add value to their life?
Bonus tip: Start with your FAQs. What questions are you getting asked the most? If two to three members of your audience are asking the same question, you can guarantee that others are wondering the same thing. Share the answers on social media as a starting point to creating valuable content.
2. Use your own unique voice
You are the face of your business – and you should be the voice of your business too! Letting your personality shine is how you will stand apart from competitors. Share your own opinion, ideas, values, and advice. Don’t try to make your content sound like anyone else’s – make it sound like yours. It can be hard to put yourself out there but it makes all the difference and leads to far more engagement.
The best way to make your voice heard is to create original content. Don’t just share other people’s work – write your own articles or blogs. And if you prefer video or audio, create a video series or podcast. Use the mediums you enjoy the most, and your passion and personality will shine.
3. Keep it simple
It’s easy to want to create content that covers it all. We have so much to say and we often start trailing into other areas. But this makes the content hard to follow, and nowadays we have such short attention spans that it can be easy to lose people. To combat this, limit your posts to one topic, one point, and one call to action. In other words – keep it simple! Make sure it is easy to understand and scannable if it’s an article or brief if it’s a video. Lists are great too!
It is better to go deeper into one topic and then save those other topics for future pieces of content. Break it down and keep it simple.
4. Share your journey
Valuable content comes in all different forms. Believe it or not, sharing your personal experiences can create some of the most valuable and engaging content of all. Opening up about snippets of your life helps your audience to get to know you and your brand better, and it gives them something to relate to.
You can turn any part of your life into content, from your new favorite coffee and how it helps you tackle your day to the places you find inspiration. You can also share recent photos, which give people an idea of what your daily life is like. This is especially great content for REALTORS as every day looks different, so there’s always fresh content to share.
5. Look at insights
Sometimes the answer to what your audience finds valuable is right in front of us. Your Facebook insights or Instagram metrics can reveal which posts are the most popular and receive the most engagement. Share more content that is similar to the posts your audience is already interacting with.
Not only will following your audience’s lead help you create valuable content, but it will also give you new ideas. For example, video house tours may perform much better than static photos, which shows you that your audience prefers video content – and you should post more of it. Again, it all goes back to your audience. Follow their lead!
6. Make sure your content is shareworthy
It’s easy to get a ‘like’ and a little harder to get a comment, but a share is the ultimate compliment. It means that someone is willing to put their name behind your content and share it with their sphere of influence. So, before you post, ask yourself if it is shareworthy. If it is shareworthy, then it is certainly valuable.
When creating content, focus on quality over quantity or value over volume. There is a lot of noise out there, but valuable content cuts through the clutter.