Creating an engaging social media post is no easy feat. Learn how to leverage social media platforms and create content that connects with your audience.

Social media platforms are the perfect opportunity to cultivate a community, build brand loyalty, and generate leads. Achieving success on social media is all about connecting with your audience in the digital arenas they prefer.

This is why your social media posts are an essential element of your overall marketing strategy.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect formula for creating an engaging social media post. However, there are an array of focus points you should maximize to create valuable content tailored to the platform’s culture, tone, and values. A social post that converts on Facebook may look different than one on LinkedIn, yet both must be engaging to succeed.

As always, WriteForMe has your back. In this article, you will learn how to create an engaging social media post to elevate your brand in the digital sphere.

Focus on Timely and Relevant Topics

At its core, social media is about sharing new, relevant messaging in real time. Of course, the occasional hot take surrounding old happenings can work in your favor. But, generally, audiences are much less likely to engage with content they’ve seen elsewhere. As crowded as the internet is, coming up with new ideas to claim your space doesn’t have to be difficult—so long as you know where to start.

The most rewarding path to connecting your brand story to the real world is simple. The easiest, most important action you can take is to be on top of relevant industry news, events, and trends. The kicker is that these need to be actions your audience actually cares about. To balance this, you must develop a rigorous media-monitoring strategy.

Identify the Right Media Outlets to Monitor

To prevent time-consuming web surfing, route news directly to you. Identify valuable media outlets, social media accounts, and other credible sources. You can use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) software or similar media monitoring tools to streamline this process for maximum ease and efficiency.

Follow Relevant Industry Trending Topics

When something is relevant, it’s covered by many media outlets simultaneously, even before audiences start discussing it on social media. Make sure to regularly identify key trends that you can easily follow, so you’re always on top of what’s going on while having time to dedicate to other parts of your strategy. By following this approach, you can create content around these new industry trends even before your competition, allowing you to lead the conversation while growing your audience.

Monitor Your Competition

Your competitors have the same goal and target audience as you—recognize them as the great sources of information they are and capitalize on them. Monitor the popularity of their posts, as well as their corresponding strategies. Granted, no one likes a copycat! Make sure you use these insights to inform your strategy, rather than plagiarize.

Types of Timely Content

If you’re still short on ideas for timeless content, there are plenty of tactics that you can employ to create timely content. The best way to ensure you’re maximizing the potential of your posts is to include all of these types of content in your content calendar.

Events

If your company is conducting an event, you can incorporate its marketing campaign into your posts to excite readers. For many members of your audience, your social media accounts are their primary communication channel with your brand. You can leverage this platform to complement the brand event exposure and key release dates.

Newsjacking

News stories are a great source of timely content; they are news, after all. Major stories get a lot of traction from media outlets. You can capitalize on the events relevant to your business or industry by creating posts that contribute to the conversation around these stories. However, newsjacking requires finesse to work. You must take a stance and then add value to it to incur engagement.

Seasonal

You can use special dates and holidays to promote your message and connect with your audience. From the changing of the seasons to federal holidays, there are ample dates you can build content around.

Gather the Right Data

Researching media outlets and the competition is only half the job. The other half is making sure that your social posts appeal to your target audience enough for them to want to engage.

The best way to determine quality engaging social media posts is to leverage the data and insights you’ve gathered to create customer profiles. Using this information allows you to take a data-driven approach, which enables you to make more relevant content for your audience.

However, not every business has an extensive database it can draw insights from. If this is your first time conducting this type of research, make sure to follow these steps:

Determine the Information Needed

The first roadblock you’ll find is figuring out the type of information you’ll need. If you’re starting from the beginning, focus on gathering demographic information about your audience (i.e., location, age, purchasing behaviors, gender, etc). This information allows you to understand who the person on the other side of the screen truly is.

Choose a Data Collection Method

There are many ways in which you can collect information about your audience. For starters, you can directly ask your customer who they are in the form of surveys. However, there are more in-depth ways to go about this process, like using analytics software to gather a broad array of data.

Collect the Data and Analyze the Results

While you should continually collect data, there comes a point when you need to start interpreting it and acting upon it. Once you know what kind of people compose your audience, you can start making content tailored to them. Be sure to constantly update this information because your audience’s needs are ever-evolving.

Research Relevant Keywords

Once you have a general understanding of your audience, it’s time to make sure your social media posts are visible. That’s where keywords come into play.

Keywords allow you to gain exposure by connecting your content with the people looking for it. Search engines try to match users with exactly what they’re looking for. This is an opportunity for your business to leverage its relevance to your audience members and continuously grow.

Not all keywords hold the same weight. The way you use them can heavily impact the way your content ranks on search engines, so make sure you’re using them strategically to match your goals.

Storytelling

Creating engaging social media posts is also a matter of making sure your posts are valuable. Instead of uploading disjointed posts, create a narrative. Humans are accustomed to looking for storylines as a way to connect with the content we consume. However, it’s hard to compose a whole story with just one social media post. For this reason, focus on the overarching narrative of your posts. What is your company’s story? How do you want to convey yourself? Audiences look for storytelling in many aspects of their lives, so it’s easy to identify with content that offers this. Think of the overall story you want to tell to find inspiration for creating engaging social media posts.

Stories hold many purposes, most of which are to evoke emotion. This makes it easier for readers to engage with a narrative. Your audience can tell when your content and posts feel forced or lack authenticity. If you’re struggling to create this type of content, remember that a good story educates, entertains, and engages. Stories should also contain conflict and resolution. Has your company recently overcome a challenge? You can both relate to the human experience and share your achievements by posting about what got your company to where it is.

Don’t Neglect the Title and Lead-In Line

The first thing your audience will see is the title and the lead-in line, which will affect whether they keep reading or not. In today’s dynamic, people want to consume content fast, so the decision to continue reading or not takes less than a second. You need to create urgency and tell your audience right away what they can expect from that piece of content.

Use attention grabbers as often as possible. Aim for shorter, yet actionable titles and lead-ins. A good headline piques the interest of the reader right away. However, never resort to cheap tactics like clickbait! Low-quality content can negatively impact your reputation.

Provide Value

Actionable information is the key to valuable content. Aside from entertainment, what does your audience gain from your content? What can you add to make it more actionable? In conjunction with good writing, the insights and information you present them with will keep them coming back.

Partner With WriteForMe for All Your Content Marketing Needs

Success in social media platforms requires consistent dedication. Your content and engaging social media posts require strategic thought to stand out from the competition. A company that cares about the content they produce—and prioritizes giving its consumers what they really want—will always have an edge over the competition.

At WriteForMe, as a content marketing agency, we understand the ins and outs of highly optimized content creation—so much so that we created an entire company dedicated to serving you.

We are eager to work with your business’s unique needs to curate truly effective content, boost consumer engagement, and drive sales.

Contact us today! And request a FREE Content Marketing Playbook.

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