How to Create Sensational Social Media Content Image

Trying to create original content for social media can be as tricky as it gets. With social media channels being a huge platform for businesses and advertisers, how do you create content to stand out from the rest?
Mastering social media content isn’t magic, however, reaching audiences at a large scale does require practice and a systematic approach. The majority of content creators find it difficult to consistently create engaging and relevant material.

Content is crucial in engaging your audience. What’s the use in using technical strategies to reach your audience for them not to engage as it’s boring, irrelevant or repetitive. Taking the time to work on your social media content DOES have its advantages.

More than half of digital marketers said that ‘original written content’ is their most important digital asset, more so than visual assets. Whilst 90% of marketers feel their content creations have boosted exposure for their organisations.

Creating visuals

Images, videos and infographics all generate lots of engagement. Visual images surpass written content such as blogs, videos and podcasts. This is because an infographic can disclose a lot of information in a simple and brief format.

How to create an infographic

The more precise, the better. Most people can only retain about 10% of the information they have heard after 3 days. Therefore, you want your information to be as easy to intake and remember as possible.

Text

Long sentences can be good in blog posts. However, they take up too much space and can be harder to read. By using concise sentences with a simple design, your readers will be able to take in the information quicker and easier.

Design

Infographics are just as informative as they are visual. By incorporating icons and graphics relevant to the theme, readers will be able to pick up on what the infographic is on before they start reading. Visuals will catch the reader’s eye, making them more likely to engage.

Statistics

Statistics are an easy way to get information across in very few words. 79% of people scan online content rather than reading every word. What more else is there to say.

Pick a narrow topic

You only want to have the most important information in your infographic, therefore, the more narrow the topic, the easier it is to condense down. Too much information and you might as well have made a blog post into an image.

Video

Video content should be treated the same as visual, concise and straight to the point. However, there are a few other pointers that should be noted.

Subtitles

Subtitles are used for accessibility, however, they’re beneficial in increasing viewer engagement. Using subtitles helps with ensuring that no information gets missed and it can make the video easier to follow. Subtitles can also be used creatively to create attention around the marketing message, so don’t overlook them.

Animation

Animation can be a good way to incorporate your business theme and have your own aesthetic. Creating your own style can make your video stand out when compared to other competitors. Animation can make videos more interesting and fun as you are able to animate whatever you want.

Call to Action

A call to action or CTA is useful for leaving your viewers wanting to respond to your message. A CTA is any device designed to prompt an immediate response or encourage an immediate sale. A well created CTA will direct your viewers without them thinking they’re being sold too.

Content

It is easy to copy and paste your content for every social media platform, but each platform is tailored for different users, interests and needs. Therefore, it is important to alter your content for each platform.

Knowing who you are reaching on each platform makes it easier to adapt content to what they would be most likely to engage with. On top of this, each platform has their own unique features, so it is important to take advantage of these to create as much engagement as possible.

Facebook

Facebook posts that include visual content such as images or videos get twice as much engagement as text posts. Therefore, it is useful to take advantage of this and include a mix of visuals and text to engage as much of your audience as possible.

For more information on Facebook posts.

Instagram

Instagram is one of the more popular platforms with its premium aesthetic and visual glamour. However, only posting refined images is not going to engage your audience as much as you think it will. Instagram is becoming very oversaturated of the same filters and images that it is harder to get people to engage in your posts. Big brands have found success in posting videos of more classified content, such as behind the scenes and sneak previews, as it is not the same old images constantly being posted, making your content more interesting than your competitors.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is slightly different from other social media platforms. LinkedIn’s platform is more suited for text-based content and is mostly used for career and business news. This can make it more difficult to create content that stands out from the rest. However, video posts are getting more popular but even then it is still possible to get significant engagement from text posts, especially with the use of emojis and slide decks made with SlideShare, a LinkedIn owned hosting service.

YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing website that allows you to share videos across multiple platforms. With long bouts of information and content available online these videos are a very effective way to reach a large audience and expand your brand. Video content is an attractive, versatile and shareable, making it more engaging for your audience. To get the most from this platform, it is best to create unique videos to tell your story in an interesting way. There are millions of videos on YouTube, so make sure you think outside the box to stand out.

Content Calendars

Content calendars are working documents used to schedule posts for your social media platforms. Well maintained content calendars help keep all of your content align with the same goal. It allows you to see what is being posted, when and where, keeping your content entwined and running along a common theme.

Content calendars can let you schedule posts for whatever date and times you would like, allowing you to ensure you are reaching most of your audience at one time. This is known as ‘prime time’. Why post about your business at 8am if most of your audience engages from 3pm-7pm. By posting during the most popular time your audience is online, there is a higher chance of it generating greater engagement and not getting missed or lost on their feeds.

Facebook has tools to allow you to schedule your posts, however, there are other platforms out there that let you schedule posts across various social media platforms all at once. Tools such as HootSuite, Buffer and CoSchedule allow you to take control and manage what you post when you post and where you post at the one time.

Content calendars allow you to plan and keep a consistent flow of content along your social media platforms. Taking the time to create a week or months’ worth of content and scheduling it allows your social media to constantly be active and generating engagement; especially when you know you will be out of the office or just do not have the time to be posting content all day, every day.

User-Generated Content

How many times do you scroll through Instagram and see the infamous Starbucks cups or a Coca-Cola bottle with their name on it?

These are types of user-generated content, a strategy that encourages your customers to create content for you – for free.

Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign was simply just creating new labels for their bottles with different names on them, making their customers want to post a picture of them all over social media, resulting in generating higher awareness of the brand.

Starbucks is famous for its user-generated content; it is known that baristas would spell your name wrong on your coffee cup as they knew their customers would post it all over social media showing the wrong spelling. In turn, advertising the brand for them.

User-generated content has gained significant traction in the last few years as it is an innovative way to increase engagement on social media. Social media is known as a way for people to show off and broadcast to the world what they are doing. Brands have taken advantage of this and encourage their customers to post their products online to show the world what they are doing and buying.

This type of content can turn into trends, meaning once one person sees someone post their Starbucks cup then they want to post their own Starbucks cup.

User-generated content has high cost-effectiveness, as a business does not need to spend as much money on creating advertisements and sponsorships. It is also a smart way to market to millennials as they are very sceptical to certain marketing tactics and do not like being sold too. Therefore, by seeing what their friends and followers are doing will encourage them to do the same.

Influential Marketing

Similar to user generate content, influencer marketing is also a very cost-effective way to generate brand awareness and increase engagement.

Gen X and Millennials are the generations of influencers. They like knowing other people’s stories of using a product and if their favourite celebrity is using it well then, they must use it too.

An influencer is a person with a significant number of followers on any social media platform and as the name suggests, they are people that influence others to live a certain way by purchasing certain products or advertising various services.

Influential marketing is extremely cost-effective as a brand does not have to pay the same amount for generating ads and buying ad space. For a fee, you can use an influencer to generate higher engagement and create a larger reach for your product or service.

Using the Correct Tools

It’s not always realistic to be outsourcing graphic designers, video editors and copywriters when you’re a smaller brand. But there are many tools and platforms out there that can help you create professional looking content suited for any job.

Graphic Tools:

Canva, Adobe Photoshop, PicMonkey, Free Vector Icons

Video Editing:

Biteable, Placeit, Anchor, StoryChic

Text Tools:

Grammarly, Hemmingway

Presentation Creators:

Microsoft Powerpoint, SlideShare, SlideSnack, Google Slides, Keynote

Obviously, this is not an extensive list, but they are very easy and valuable tools that can help every business with any content creation needs.

Social media is a vast and thriving platform, however, when kept up to date with the evolving tastes and trends, can be a very cost-effective form of advertising for many businesses. Hopefully, the tips and tricks explained in this guide will help even the least tech savvy person!

We understand that your time is super valuable to growing your business and social media may not be at the top of the to-do list.  Our in-house team of marketing specialists can help create engaging content for your social platforms to ensure you’re delivering relevant and engaging communications to your social followings.
Contact Us to discuss how we can help you, on Dungannon 028 3754 9025 or Belfast 028 9002 5050.