Chances are, if you've logged onto the internet anytime in the last decade, you've probably noticed that social media is the king, queen, and that annoying sibling at the family gathering that you just can't stand but so happen to love.
Even more than that, it plays a huge role in how we interact with our clients, our personal connections, and the public as a whole. Learning how to master that can help increase not only your engagement, but it can also help increase your business' bottom line. So that's kind of why I'm here. I'm the Community Manager for PushPress, and I wanted to dive into five different styles of content creation that can help make that happen.
We're going to break that down into different types of social content. Let's get started.
#1 Make Relatable Content
Think of this as something like telling a personal story. I'm starting off with this one because it might be one of the most important, while also being one of the most underutilized, especially by business owners.
Now, there's probably a reason for that. We often gloss over relatable content because it comes with a sense of vulnerability. We have to tell our story, or at least the story of somebody else. That can make it kind of challenging, as being vulnerable can be hard. But it's worth it, I promise. It's also one of the best performing content because it drives a connection with your audience.
Think of it like this. If I go to a store and I'm looking for something that I've never used before, I'm more likely to listen to my grandma give me a recommendation because I know her, than I am a stranger. Creating relatable content allows us to cross that border and kind of become the grandma in that situation. We create content that our audience can relate to, that they can apply to their personal life. Doing so not only drives interaction and engagement, but it also helps create a personal and meaningful connection that drives your audience to want to come back for more, because they feel like they're connecting with another person.
#2 Make Interactive Content
Think about interactive content like a challenge, or maybe a recipe, that's meant to be re-shared by somebody in their own way. Your goal here is essentially to create something that requires an action beyond just conversation. When we do this, it also gives us an opportunity to raise awareness for our brand and who we are. Think about that recipe for example. You create something that's very family friendly. It's healthy. It's easy to make, something that people can involve kids in. You share that recipe, a nice little graphic, maybe a video if you're handy, and then you put it out into the world.
Once it's out though? Try to encourage the people that are engaging in that post to not only tag you (or your team), but your business too. Now, not only are people interacting with your original form of content, they are sharing it in their own way too. Suddenly a small army of walking billboards are driving awareness to your brand. It creates this nice circle of life, if you will, for social media. That's a win-win for everyone involved.
And at least in the recipes case? It also means that someone gets to eat some good food.
#3 Make Conversational Content
This one's pretty straightforward. We're talking about asking questions and sparking discussions. When I say sparking discussions, I don't mean - "Hey, what's your favorite color?" That's a little too, I don't know, surface level. We need to dive a little bit deeper than that. Aim for conversational content that not only asks a question, but encourages deeper discussion . That could be something about a training method that you've been running at your gym. It could also be a nutrition challenge that you hosted and want to converse more about.
Discussions like these are very powerful.
Conversational content is powerful because social algorithms love comments. Facebook and other social platforms tend to organically boost posts with more comments. And that's pretty much universal across all social media platforms.
We want to spark conversations and this is an easy to do it.
#4 Make Celebratory Content
If youâve ever posted a client victory? Youâre on the right track for this concept.
Back when I had my own gym, we used to write client stories that highlighted both who a client was and why they were at our business. That usually involved diving deep into their background of what got them started in fitness. Did they play sports? What's their family and personal life like?
They also covered how our company, team, and community helped build them up. If we can create that, it's not only telling a story that we can use to sell, it's also telling a story that your clients can use to share. That's extremely powerful.
It ties into the interactive side of content in Option 2 that we talked about and its relatable content. Can you say win-win for everyone? Plus you get the opportunity to share what your community is all about and how it can help. This can also be something as simple as creating a picture, short video clip, and a highlight about how a client set a new PR, cool things happening in the community, or a major business milestone.
There's a lot of different directions here.
#5 Make Humorous Content
Funny videos, a great meme, or a laughable gif are the name of the game here.
Be clever here, but donât forget to also be appropriate. There's a balance to being humorous and not overstepping something that might alienate your community. I'd also try not to overplay the humor card! Humor is a strong human emotion that drives connection, interaction, and appreciation. Being overly serious all the time can kind of be a bad thing, similar to being humorous too often.
But if you can help people laugh, it also helps people feel welcome, and everyone is more likely to engage with one another. Look anywhere on social media and youâll see people sharing memes, gifs or funny posts all the time. If you can create that in a way that helps drive awareness to what you offer? Even better.
Wrapping upâŚ
All right, let's recap a little bit.
We have a few different options here, but these are certainly not everything. There's a lot of ways to stay engaged, especially now! We have relatable, interactive, conversational, celebratory, and humorous âcategoriesâ to brainstorm from.
You'll notice that I never say - "Hey, write this specific kind of post!"
That's because I think that categories are more helpful for most people. It kind of creates a thought process, right? We gain an idea of what that category might look like, and then we can use that to drive inspiration on what we actually create.
Donât forget to vary things up a little bit either. Avoid getting so settled into one type of content that you forget about the rest! Mix it up, diversify the good old social media portfolio, and keep things going.
One last thing before I go â I canât encourage you enough to make sure that you are re-engaging with people on your post. If someone answers the question you asked? Thank them! Share a celebratory post that people congratulate you on. Drop them a gif, that virtual high five, or play the humor card as thanks. Many of these things can drive your engagement up, and if your engagement goes up? Your exposure goes with it.
Hopefully you've found this blog post helpful, or it at least gave you some kind of blueprint inspiration for types of social content you can create.
Let us know what you think! What kind of content are you creating that's driving a ton of engagement? We'd love to hear it.
