Tips for Creating Content
Creating content is something that can be a huge obstacle for some business owners. As previously discussed in another blog post, completely outsourcing your social media needs isn’t always an option, which can leave you feeling a little bit lost. In this blog post you’ll find some tips I’ve put together to help you no matter where you are in your content creation rut.
STRATEGIES
The word ‘strategy’ sounds a little intimidating, but really it’s just finding the ingredients you need for your goal, and implementing them in a way that will help you achieve that goal. It’s like baking a cake. You know you want your end result to be a delicious cake, so you have to start at the very beginning; you find out what ingredients you need. Once you have your eggs, milk, flour, and sugar, you use the recipe to find out what amounts of each of those items you need, and also if there’s any particular order in which you need to add them. And finally when it’s time to bake, you have to factor in the temperature of the oven and the time. You aren’t going to get the same result you want if you try to cut corners by only putting in half the flour, or cutting 30 minutes off the baking time. The same applies to your social media. You need to decide on your end goal, for example, 10 sales this month (your cake). Next, you look at what you’re going to need to do to reach that goal, maybe it’s increasing engagement, or posting your products in your stories more (your flour and eggs). After that, you focus on implementing, increase engagement by interacting more with your followers, utilizing interactive stickers in your stories, scheduling stories, etc. (mixing ingredients, then baking) Just like you keep an eye on your oven and check the doneness of your cake with a toothpick, you’ll need to monitor what you’ve been doing so you can keep in mind if anything is obviously working or not working, so you can adjust slightly as needed.
INSPIRATION
You can find inspiration anywhere. I have found inspiration for content through songs, Pinterest posts, or through just talking with my significant other. And then once you have that little seed of inspiration, you can apply it to the strategies and goals you’ve already decided on, to create a piece of content that incorporates your strategies.
REPURPOSING
Repurposing content is very helpful, for all the obvious reasons. It’s been said that you don’t need to find a way to say 100 things, but rather find 100 ways to say one thing. A common observation is that reach on social media seems to not be consistent with the number of one’s followers, and while that is something every creator struggles with, you can make it work a little in your favor. People have short attention spans, especially on the Internet. People see 100s of posts and photos on their social media feeds every day, and they’re not going to remember things long before the next day’s inundation pushes it out. So if you recycle content, nobody’s going to notice; and unless there’s any changes you need or want to make to the photo/graphic and caption, you could even just copy and paste the entire thing! It’s widely agreed in the marketing world that a person needs to see something 7 times before they take action, whether that’s purchasing an item, or making a booking. So not only are your followers not going to notice that you repurposed old content, they need you to! If you make one post about something and then never post about it again, it won’t be in anybody’s mind; you need to bring it up frequently so people will remember.
RELAX
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it 100 times: relax. Posting on social media can feel daunting because you’re putting yourself out in front of who knows how many people, so it feels easier to just push it back into your drafts and avoid the whole thing. But that isn’t doing anyone any good, especially not your business. Like I said in the previous paragraph, content flows into and out of people’s brains so often because of everything they consume, so even if your post gets 0 likes and is a colossal failure in your eyes, guess what? For one, you’re the only one who notices. And two, that just means that it needs another chance to shine! There are so many factors into why a post gets less traffic that have absolutely nothing to do with you. One post is not going to make or break your business’ social media; one viral post more than likely isn’t going to get you hundreds of sales and followers, and one post that flopped isn’t going to make people unfollow you. So next time you go to post something, unclench your jaw (seriously, your dentist called and he’s worried about your molars), take a deep breath, and hit post. And if you want to, message me and tell me you need a hype man on your post to help with engagement, or just for encouragement. <3
~Elizabeth