Most people prefer social media content that is engaging and has value. But coming up with original and engaging content is very tasking. It becomes more difficult if you have no idea what to post or even how to post content to generate traffic.
A social media content with value, simply put, is a post that generates sizeable revenue and positive Return On Investment (ROI). It is also content that goes viral, and whose likes, shares, and comments run into thousands and millions; whilst sticking to your brand’s theme and vision.
Here are 6 categories of social media content that are sure to have great value and improve your followers’ engagement.
Contents
According to research conducted by Noah Kagan of OkDork, content that contains infographics receives more shares and engagement.
Infographics are more persuasive than visuals and less boring than wordy paragraphs. Although creating infographic content needs more time and creativity, they tend to improve comprehensibility by 25%.
Infographics are the best form of content to use if you want to break down very complex topics. People tend to share infographics more than other social media content and this brings about brand awareness.
However, you should note that an infographics creator should have adequate knowledge of the topic in question and some graphics designing skills.
Below are some great examples of infographics that generated traffic.
Heroes of Digital gave a rundown of the 2020 General Election in Singapore using infographics.
We used colourful graphs, pie charts, and other tools to display the performance of the selected political parties. The last slide contained a call to action that asked our audience to click on the link in our Instagram bio to "find out what made voters tick".
Hopkins Medicine made an educational post on how to properly wear face masks at the peak of the Covid 19 pandemic, as a means to educate people on how not to contract the virus.
Their first slide contained a summary of the guidelines to follow to properly wear a mask. This infographic content is short and straight to the point. This in turn makes it engaging and shareable.
User-generated content (UGC) is content that comes solely from your customers or social media audience. As reviews are a key propellant to online purchases, so are UGC to brands on social media.
To get UGC, all you need to do is to get your customers to leave reviews or –in the case of social media, to take pictures of your product and tell how well it served them, and voila, you use those as content.
Not only is it a cost-effective way of creating great content, but it also makes your audience trust your product enough to make a purchase. There’s proof that UGC-based ads get more click-through rates than other social media content. In addition to that, there’s a 28% increment in engagement when UGC and professional content are combined skilfully.
The most significant benefit of UGC is that by using it as content, you'll get to know what your customers think about your brand. It drives web traffic and is also a great way to get original social media content without hassle.
Here are some great examples of UGC:
Aerie is a women's clothing brand that pledged to only to post pictures of models in their bathing suits with zero filters.
This was in a bid to fight against excessive photo editing and its adverse effect on women in society. They took this a step further by asking their customers to take pictures in their bathing suits and post them, unedited, and with a hashtag. They then reposted on their feed and tagged the customers.
This post got more than 13000 likes with comments that hinted that their audience loves them. Most of those comments were centered on appreciating aerie on posting pictures of women with different body sizes while some went ahead to order a bathing suit.
This bridal and anniversary ring brand has made it a rule to share prenuptial and wedding pictures with short story captions of their customers.
In this particular post, iz&co told how they crafted engagement rings for a particular customer a year ago, and how the said customer chose them to design and craft his wedding ring. They ended their caption by calling on their audience to congratulate that customer.
This post shows their audience that they care for more than a professional relationship with their audience as seen in their interactions with the customer. It also tells their social media audience that their excellent ring crafting skill was what made their client rehire them after more than a year.
Meundies are strong advocates of body-positivity and self-confidence. Here is an example of their content that is based on their customer testimonial.
In this Instagram post, they reposted a customer's body positivity post.
Not only is this post calling attention to how fitting and comfortable looking the undies are on her; her story about how she is ready to embrace her body and all its flaws with Meundies’s lingerie - as evidenced in the comment section - resonates with a lot of women. They too have this same real-life issues but because she trusted this brand to make her feel good about her body, they can too.
When the live-streaming feature came out on social media platforms, a lot of users were reluctant to use it. This was simply because it seemed unpredictable. Your wifi connection might decide that mid-streaming was the best time to go on a break, or your nerves might be so frayed that you blunder, or other unforeseen circumstances.
However, with time, it was proven that live-streaming is indeed a niche of valuable content. In fact, 80% of social media users prefer live videos to written content.
The benefits of live streaming cannot be overemphasised. Through live-streaming, you can announce an upcoming event, promote an offer or even give a sneak peek of a new product. Your live-streaming video can also be a question and answer platform for you and your audience
This American digital media content once did a 45minutes live-streaming; where two of their employees burst a watermelon by tying over 650 rubber bands around it. Although it wasn't in any way related to their brand's mission, it made their viewers engaged.
Because of how interesting it is, this live-streaming video got over 50k views and more than 10k shares, thereby increasing their brand awareness.
Disney had Airbnb build a treehouse for the premier of the Jungle book movie. They live-streamed this event, which included interviewing the movie’s cast and crew.
Live-streaming of the Jungle Book premier built anticipation which in turn skyrocketed views when the movie was finally released. Their stream received over 110k views and 1k+ comments.
Since these ephemeral content were introduced to social media, they have steadily climbed to the top of the list of contents that social media users value. The fact that they disappear for good after 24hours is the main reason why social media users strive to see them, just to keep up with the trend.
Similar to live streaming, you can use your IG/FB stories to showcase your brand’s behind the scenes. You can experiment with different themes and colors that are not unique to your brand and see how your audience reacts to it. But of course, you shouldn't deviate from your brand’s mission and vision.
If your brand has up to 10,000 followers on Instagram, you can include links in your stories. This in turn drives social traffic to your website.
In her story, the owner of the Freelance CFO, Katelyn Magnuson mentioned her high-value mastermind course. She uploaded two images, the first contained written texts that explained what her Mastermind course is all about. The second contained a call to action that urged her audience to sign up as there are only 4 early bird spaces left.
With this two-story content, the freelance CFO has explained what her brand is about and the aim of her Mastermind course. Her call to action post will urge a procrastinating customer to register and become part of her Mastermind class.
In one of their stories, the pampered chef posted a picture of a chocolate cake dipped in chocolate and asked their audience to “swipe up to learn how to make it”.
This story entices the audience into following through with their call to action of swiping up to learn how to make it. This will help increase the brand's traffic and brand awareness.
The best way to make your social media audience aware of a new blog post is by posting a picture about the blog post, writing a catchy caption, and linking to your website/blog.
Blog posts are generally categorised into newsworthy content, “what” posts, “how-to articles”, videos, and listicles.
An article is said to be newsworthy if it's interesting enough that people want to know more.
The example below shows how New York Times used images and a short caption to urge their audience to read the story of 6 men who were sexually harassed in the military.
A "what" post introduces or defines a topic, idea, or new product to an audience. An example is Buzzfeed's Instagram post on "What day the pandemic started to feel real"
These types of articles explain a step-by-step procedure to make an item or achieve something.
The example below shows abeautifulness brand's a call to action for their Instagram audience to click on her website’s link and learn how she built a 3-story, 6-rooms dollhouse for her daughter.
Videos are social media posts that contain links to a brand's content on Youtube or other video streaming apps.
Listicles are articles that are written in a list form. After infographics, listicles are the most valuable content types for social media marketing.
People prefer to read listicles because it is easier and faster to read through unlike other type of blog post content.
In the example below, Buzzfeed uploaded a caption for 22 famous couples that fell in love on set, with a link to the complete article in their bio.
Nothing beats engaging an audience on social media. Interactive content as a type of social media content includes quizzes and social media contests. These interactive contents help brands to get to know what their audience prefers.
Besides this, interactive content makes an audience feel like they can contribute to a brand's development and in turn, makes them feel like they are part of the brand's community.
There are different types of quizzes that you can use as social media content, but the most popular is the personality quiz. These types of quizzes are centered on personality checks and are said to have the highest participation and shares. Note that although they are content with high value, quizzes do better on Facebook, websites, and blogs.
Interactive content is advantageous as they bring heightened engagement amongst a brand's audience. It also helps a brand to better understand its audience and it can be used to subtly introduce a new product to an audience.
AirBnB organised a quiz of 8 questions that allowed their audience to choose a room, colour palette, and activity preference to know their lodging personality.
Through this interactive content, they educated their audience on the type of room that suits their personality and also used this as a means to show off their available lodgings. It got more than 1500 shares
During a festive period, Amazon organised an assessment quiz that had a giveaway from brands such as Michael Kors and L’Oreal, for the winners.
Not only did this interactive quiz allow Amazon to conduct market research with ease, but it also brought social media visibility and product promotions for the brands involved.
Uploading valuable content is indeed vital in social media marketing, but there are other things you have to put into consideration to ensure maximum sales and brand awareness.
Stating your mission will help you to identify your target audience and what content they love.
A powerful mission statement will determine how your readers are moved by your content. It will also dictate how your readers feel about your brand, what actions they will take after viewing your content, and how these actions will influence your business.
In general, your content marketing’s mission statement will set the overall direction of your content marketing strategy and will guide your entire content creation process.
Your knowledge of the sources of your traffic will help you to know where to concentrate your efforts and where to improve.
There are a lot of tools that you can use to monitor and analyse your traffic, some of them include Google Analytics, Open Web Analytics, Matomo, etc.
These are six traffic channels that you should closely monitor:
a. Social traffic
b. Organic search traffic
c. Direct traffic
d. Email traffic
e. Referral traffic
f. Paid traffic
In social media marketing, you are either seeking brand awareness or lead generation and nurturing. Below are engagement metrics that you have to look out for, both in brand awareness and lead generation.
Comments on your blog posts:
The size of your audience on social media:
Mobile readership:
Time-on-site:
Page view:
Email subscription:
Event and webinar registrations:
Conversion rates:
I hope that this article has shown you that although posting articles of great value have a large impact on your brand’s social media success, it is vital that you keep track of other actions, such as stating your mission statement (and sticking with it), tracking your traffic sources, and your engagement metrics.
Interested in building your social media content? Heroes of Digital is the best social media agency in Singapore. With more than 600 clients under our belt and half a decade of experience, we are the go-to Singapore social media marketing agency.
Get your free social media marketing consultation with us today!
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