How To Make Your Social Media Content Stand Out

By Claire Winter

Keeping a valuable and consistent social presence is difficult. Not only are there hundreds, thousands and millions of other people trying to do the same thing, but there are so many channels, from Facebook to LinkedIn to Twitter to Instagram, all with their own unique marketing qualities, that it’s hard to know where to start!

You may be wondering to yourself, ‘where do I find the time?’

Here are 11 tips for engaging with your social audience:

USE DAY-OF-THE-WEEK HACKS

Ever heard of ‘Motivation Monday’ or ‘Workout Wednesday’? Planning your content around these days, already dedicated to specific content, can help you organise your social accounts and join in on what is already a popular trend! You can use hashtags to make sure your posts are easily found.

SHARE HELPFUL HOW-TO’S

Do you have customers always asking the same burning questions? Then, why not answer them across your social media platforms? This gives useful insight which you can then link to on the FAQ of your website when customers are looking for the answer.

BEHIND-THE-SCENES CONTENT

To increase transparency, show what you or your team get up to behind the scenes! Not only does this place heightened trust in your customers but if you do need to grow your team then people can learn what it is like to work with you 

GIVE VIDEO A GO

Videos no longer need to be perfect to make an impact as long as they are real, relatable and engaging. Even a 20 second clip can make the difference between someone checking out your business or scrolling past it.

SHARE OTHER PEOPLE’S CONTENT

Find businesses who compliment the work you’re doing and share the content that you love! It may gain you some return shares and exposure later on down the line. Helping fellow small business owners will widen your network and open you up to new opportunities too.

ORGANISE CHALLENGES

When people see others taking part in something, they might want to join in too! Choose an incentive, something to increase motivation, and encourage people to tag others and spread the word! It can involve anything from a 10-day plank challenge to 30 days of abundance. Five-day challenges are very popular in the online space. Can you do your own unique spin on the challenge model?

MAKE THE MOST OF ANNOUNCEMENTS

Announcements make people excited, therefore create short, snappy content that will grab everyone’s attention! This could be exciting news about the business, promotions and discounts, or a new product release. Hype it up! When I launched my new podcast - Cracking Content - it made it to number 2 in the UK marketing charts because of the buzz we created around it.

ASK FOR INPUT

On social media your customers are right at your fingertips, so why not use their insight? Ask them questions about what future content they want to see, or about their personal interests and hobbies. Get to know them and then you’ll know how to adapt your business to better suit their needs.

ENCOURAGE REVIEWS

How do you know how well your products/services are doing without any feedback? Encourage others to leave honest comments about their experience with you so that you can include these on product pages or as testimonials.

SCHEDULE SOCIAL MEDIA IN ADVANCE

Make things easy for yourself and schedule posts in advance! Using scheduling software like Hootsuite or Buffer to help you organise your content so that you stay on track and meet your goals.

REPURPOSE POPULAR CONTENT

It’s unrealistic to expect to produce new content all the time - there just aren’t enough hours in the day! So, why not use popular content you’ve already shared but switch it up and share it through a different medium? For example, changing a blog post into a video or a blog post into a podcast. Get creative!

Claire Winter has been a content creator, journalist, and dedicated tea drinker for twenty years. She is a trained NCTJ journalist and started her career at ITN in radio and television. Passionate about helping business owners create content that converts via her online mastermind and 1:1 training, she loves sharing writing tips and content tips over in her own community, Cracking content.

Claire currently writes for all 41 Families magazines covering the UK and reaching 9 million parents a year. She has helped hundreds of large and small businesses with content marketing campaigns in print, online, and social media.