If you want to experience the epitome of self-centered, spammy social media, follow a company who only posts about its products or services. Also, if you were told social media is the ideal place to post about your business and that alone will get attention from your target audience, then you were misled.
Social media is the perfect place to post relevant content for your target audience to get positive attention for your brand. It’s also a great way to attract more relevant prospects for your pipeline and to keep your customers coming back to your content.
The difference here is key.
If you are posting about the things you care about, then you will love your page and think it is valuable. But, you are not the target audience, are you?
You have to figure out what the audience cares about and post about that. And, don’t lie to yourself – the audience doesn’t want their personal feed clogged with your newest promotional sales-sounding post.
So, how do you dig down to find content that people really want to read and become the brand that people really want to follow?
Leverage Other’s Content
When it comes to leveraging other’s content, this will mean two important things:
- Third-party content related to your industry
- What competitors are writing about
Let’s dive into both of these.
Third-party content
If you are familiar with our content, you know we preach about utilizing third-party content to build thought leadership. But not even just thought leadership, it works for your company’s corporate handles too.
Finding sources of content that are related to your company’s industry or content that relates to who your customers are, will keep them on your profile and help build more followers. Your company will be seen as informative and on the latest trends and insights, even if it is not your brands own content.
While it’s good to mix in your own great content, the third-party material really shows your looking to help your audiences learn and succeed.
What are competitors posting?
Copying what others have created or posted might seem like stealing, but keeping up with and staying ahead of your competitors is key. Obviously, you don’t want to copy their exact wording or style, but posting and sharing similar topics will be beneficial.
You need to see what your competitors are doing right and adjust it to your own brand.
But, don’t stop there – look at companies in entirely different industries and see how they handle their social media accounts. You don’t want to become another brand entirely, but look at what works and what doesn’t.
If you still think this sounds suspect, you need to realize people have been doing this for centuries and calling it “inspiration.” If calling it inspiration makes you feel better (because it isn’t really an ethical problem), then go find brands that “inspire” you.
Again, let’s be very clear: never, ever plagiarize. Getting a formula, idea or angle is one thing – taking a phrase or article is something else entirely.
Keep Your Ear to the Ground
You need to be listening to your audience if you ever hope to give them the kind of content they want.
If you aren’t already on a platform to help you with social listening then you need to be – you need to know when people are talking about your brand, products or industry and see what they are saying.
When you listen to the conversation, note what questions, frustrations, and problems your audience has and solve them with supportive content.
And as you outline some of your best customers and target audience members, you will want to build a profile that goes far beyond the generic customer persona. Use social media to help fill in the gaps.
What kind of content is your audience posting when it comes to current events, personal interests, and their industry news? Let your profile take on the shape of an actual person who you want to interest and post content specifically for that person to help you avoid generic assumption content that bores everyone.
Whittle Down Your Newsfeed
Is there a way you can have hundreds or thousands of followers without seeing Norm’s cats or Sarah’s leftover breakfast from yesterday?
But it’s not even just that.
There is plenty of random and fluffy content that adds no value to you when it comes to important content sharing decisions. And content discovery can be challenging with how fast content is produced and how quickly newsfeeds flow.
On top of that, sales and marketing people shouldn’t be bogged down with looking for great content to share with their networks or for their teams to share.
This is where an employee advocacy solution becomes valuable to your team. With a content curation solution, like EveryoneSocial, you can weed out the mundane and focus on the industry news.
While you may want to socially stalk some of your followers later to fill out those detailed personas, you don’t want to battle your newsfeed every day. With a social dashboard, you can utilize keywords to listen in to specific conversations and schedule posting so you publish at the right time for optimal engagement.
Streamlining your newsfeed to provide the content curation is helpful to your own profile is just one more thing EveryoneSocial does right. It’s a lot easier to be inspired when the right kind of content is pulsing through your newsfeed.
Final Thoughts
The above three tips are great ways to:
- Start understanding your audience wants and needs for company content.
- Understand their industry needs to supplement with great third-party content.
- Consider employee advocacy solution to block out the fluff and organize keywords, brands, and more for the best content without the noise.
By understanding the value of social media and the content you are working with, you’ll find customers and prospects are more engaged with your posts. The ultimate goal is to build a rapport with customers and prospects as the go-to source that is interesting and solves their challenges.
Remember, you don’t just want engagement (likes, comments, shares), you also want click-throughs and conversions. Even third-party content can help your company close more deals and gain more customers.
The key is to look for ways to build a stronger brand that your followers, customers, and employees can really get behind.
