It’s common knowledge that social media platforms now account for the bulk of global communication. Because of this, knowing how to utilise social media effectively is a crucial skill. This post contains a few things I’ve found useful as a newcomer in the world of social media marketing, so have a look if you’re interested. As a newcomer to social media, here are eight pointers to help you succeed.
While this will get you started on your trip, it won’t be enough. If you want to keep your audience and work as hard as possible to turn them into paying customers, you’ll need to come up with a brilliant strategy. Once you grasp how readers behave, you’ll start to see repeating themes in your material. Content pillars are patterns that assist you organise the many types of content you’ve been publishing.
When it comes to social media, a brand or company’s “Material Pillars” are the many topics or forms of media content it employs. Most individuals build their lives on five key principles, however these can be adjusted to suit individual needs. They include instruction, advertising, amusement, participation in the community, and engagement.
Foundational pieces of information for a certain audience
First, I’ll give you an example of one of them. Imagine you’re a baker who’s interested in expanding your business online.
The articles filed under “Educational” will focus on enlightening readers about various aspects of the baking industry. For instance, a typical cake’s components may be altered to make a vegan version. It’s also a great place to share recipes of all types.
Any changes you make to your product will be publicised in promotional materials. Without sales, you will still talk up your baked goods and promote them. Promoting also includes announcing new menu offerings.
Memes and videos are included in the category of “entertainment.” Possibly share hilarious stories about your time in the kitchen, including blooper films of your failed dishes and other kitchen antics.
The latest local and international baking news will be covered on Community. Say, for example, you’ve stumbled onto a brand-new online store in your area that specialises in baking supplies. Or perhaps you wish to inform the public of a novel croissant fusion that has recently gained international popularity. Feedback from satisfied clients might be included as well.
In other words, “engagement” refers to any type of material that prompts some sort of participation on the part of your target audience. They might be encouraged to participate through contests and prizes. Having a blog or forum where your readers may talk to you and each other is also an option.
After defining content pillars, we may move on to the process of developing them. I’m going to outline several techniques for seeing trends and developing, adjusting, combining, and eradicating content pillars in your content strategy.
Realize who you’re talking to
I’ve already said that the primary function of social media is to facilitate two-way conversation. Mainly, your capacity for relating to and engaging with your target demographic. To achieve this goal, you must first gather information about your intended audience, including the type of people they are, any biases they may have, the topics that interest them, and the methods that are most likely to catch their attention. In order to find out what kind of content your followers like, you may poll them on Instagram. You may also test out various content topics to determine which ones resonate most with your target audience. You can use the results of these preliminary tests as the basis for further development.
Profit from the mistakes of your rivals
Learning about your competition and implementing what you can from what they’re doing will help you strengthen the foundations you established after researching your target audience. A competitive analysis tool can help you monitor the progress of your rivals. Check out their posting frequency, popular tags, and content topics across channels.
Think on how you’ve done
It’s also crucial to take an honest look at how you think your marketing abilities have developed over time. Repeatedly examining your own efforts and assessments is essential. You should also pay close attention to feedback received on your postings. In other words, you can’t trust the figures alone. Just because a post has a lot of likes or shares doesn’t guarantee it’s excellent. Particularly if there is a general trend of negative feedback.
Build your foundation
With this wealth of data at your disposal, you can begin developing your content pillars. If you make a list of the keywords or subjects you wish to cover, you can likely classify them into categories. These recurring ideas will serve as the foundation of your material.
Join your bases together
There is always the possibility of merging some of your content pillars or buckets if you have more than five or six. This will make sure that you haven’t missed any themes or subjects in your decreased number of pillars.
If “engagement” is one of your pillars, for instance, see if you can include it into the “community” or “entertainment” pillars as well. To get people interested, you may hold contests based on recent community events, or you can just have a treasure hunt in cyberspace.