17 Best Content Creation Tips for Social Media, Marketing & Businesses
With the appetite for online content growing and more businesses looking for ways to increase the impact of their marketing, content creation sits as a top marketing focus in 2022. Nearly half of all marketing professionals say content is a critical part of their overall marketing strategy. Want to know the best content creation tips to help you achieve more of your business and marketing goals on social media and on other key channels?
I interviewed two of my favorite content creation experts, Deven Machette and Jayde Powell, about how brands and creators can take their strategy to the next level.
Tips From These Content Creation Experts
Jayde worked with brands like Delta Airlines and Sunwink to develop impactful content creation strategy for social media platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and more. She recently became a full-time content creator, working with brands to create customized content and writing for publications like Byrdie.
Deven started her own digital marketing agency, where she took on clients like Quinn (a brand she helped grow to over 100K followers on TikTok). And in 2022 she accepted a brand marketing position with Blake Lively’s premium mixer brand Betty Buzz.
We talked about how to improve your content creation quality, how to get more user-generated content creation (UGC), which content data points are most useful to include in reports, and what to do to overcome some common challenges of starting or scaling your influencer content marketing.
It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to focus on content creation for social media, your website, or retention marketing channels.
Here are the 17 best content creation tips for social media, marketing and businesses in general. And if you want all their incredible content creation tips, make sure to watch the video.
1. Start with your business goals and work backward.
The basis of a content creation strategy should be built with a focus on the goals that you’re trying to accomplish. Once you’ve outlined your goals, whether it’s brand awareness with a certain audience, sales, etc, you can start talking about execution.
2. Consider a phased channel approach.
Don’t try to be everywhere at once. Businesses find it especially tempting to try to establish social media content creation for every channel because they think it’ll make them more competitive. You can identify a primary target marketing distribution channel to focus on, and then develop a phased strategy where you integrate additional channels as needed.
3. Lead with a content audit.
Figure out where do you already have a presence, which channels are you activating on most frequently, and use that information to identify priority channels. For example if you already have an active existing community on one channel, does it make sense to push it to the side to focus on chasing a trend?
4. Repurpose content with intention.
You can’t just post the same content on a bunch of different channels. Different channels necessitate nuanced content creation for maximum results. It’s a matter of knowing your audience in different places, and then tailoring your hook and the formatting so it doesn’t look lazy. Experiment with this to find the right templates for you.
5. There’s no easy definition for virality.
Virality lacks a standardized definition across all channels, especially when it comes to social media. For example, going viral on TikTok means different things to different accounts. You could get 20,000 views or 20M views. Ultimately if the numbers aren’t resulting in sales, growth or achievement of your business goals, they’re pointless. According to HubSpot, the most common metric used to measure content success is sales, followed by website traffic.
6. Shares are one of the most important KPIs to measure.
How many times people share your content serves as an early indicator of the potential to go viral. Shares help expand the reach of your content beyond your own network, oftentimes more quickly and effectively than they would organically perform on their own. This also sends a signal to most platform algorithms about the quality of your content.
7. TikTok requires its own dedicated resources.
TikTok has become crucial for brands to consider because so many consumers are actively engaged on that platform. But it’s much different than other platforms and requires a heavy lift to create dedicated content. You might want to consider hiring experienced creators.
8. If you want to be successful on TikTok, try chaos.
Chaotic, unpolished content performs best on TikTok right now. Your content needs to have a very low production quality.
Pro tip – Try piecing together very short clips, even cutting off the speech between clips. That chaotic bounce/pace keeps people engaged.
9. Don’t try to be hilarious or trendy if it doesn’t fit your brand identity.
Not every brand needs to be hilarious or edgy. And definitely don’t feel like you have to insert Gen-Z-sounding lingo into everything. It risks coming across as very cringe, which will end up alienating your existing community if that isn’t authentic to your brand identity.
10. Leave room for content creation to satisfy trends.
This is especially true for social media content strategy, and even more so on TikTok. These tend to move fast, and you need to have flexibility in your content calendar that allows for you to create for specific trends of the moment. You also need to empower your content creators or social media managers to feel like they can act quickly to avoid missing the moment. Just don’t overdo content to satisfy these trends because that reduces the originality and creativity of your brand.
11. Successful influencer or content creator outreach is hard.
Because of the unique nature of the social media platform, sending direct messages (DMs) on TikTok to reach out to influencers or content creators is a HUGE no. Sending outreach via Twitter or Instagram DMs is more acceptable but also can be hit or miss. In many cases it’s easiest to get in touch with those you’ve built an existing relationship with.
You can also try out influencer marketing platforms, but that can also be tough because you add a middle man. The quality of content may not be as high because you haven’t directly briefed the creator yourself. You don’t have a working relationship.
12. Gifting can yield great results.
One way to drive UGC or get organic influencer/creator engagement is by gifting. Send product or swag, but keep in mind, it’s a gift. There’s no obligation for them to respond or post publicly. This can yield great results when you’ve been thoughtful with the product or packaging experience, though.
13. Your influencer budget is too low.
Influencer marketing and content creation are expensive. Costs per post can range from $500 to over $5000.
Just don’t try to lowball creators because you’ll get a bad brand reputation. Content creators and influencers increasingly communicate with each other to share their experiences with businesses.
14. You have to make your agreements with influencers or creators very clear.
Make sure you’re outlining all the details of your relationships with influencers or creators.
For example, do you want them to post organic content to their accounts or do you want to use the content on your account? Will you run their content as paid ads? On which channels and for how long?
Important to note: A brand or marketer can NOT take someone’s content from their organic channel and run it as they please without an agreement and fair compensation.
15. Keep diversity in mind.
Don’t fall into the trap of featuring faces in your content that all look the same. The pool of experienced creators is broader than ever. Make sure you’re being mindful of the inclusion of your content creation and marketing strategy.
16. Community management as part of a content creation strategy can’t be overlooked.
Brands like Netflix, Spotify and Duolingo nurture community relationships across multiple channels. They embrace inclusion, they’re responsive, and they deliver content that they know will resonate with their audiences, without trying too hard to be just like any other brands.
Look to nurture your community relationships with your content creation.
17. Chasing virality can ruin your brand.
When virality is your true north, content creation becomes disjointed and sporadic. It doesn’t feel like you’re telling a cohesive brand story, but rather a series of short, unrelated stories.
This can hurt your long-term brand building efforts.
Interested in more of the best content creation tips? Here’s the full video (embedded above) so you can get a full collection advice from these content creation experts. Plus the interview was way more entertaining than I conveyed here. I’d also appreciate it if you liked the video or subscribed to the channel!
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