Create Engaging Content for Social Media

All the content in the world doesn't do you much good if it doesn't prompt your audience to take action. I'm talking about likes, follows, saves, shares, and most importantly, moving from social media to your email list to purchasing your products or services. It's easy to get lost in the shuffle and scroll. 

How do you prompt people to take action when the noise of social media is often overwhelming?

There is tons of "insider information" on algorithms, feeds, analytics, and grids. Every social media manager has tips for hacking these seemingly uncontrollable things, but today I'm going to focus on something that is completely within your control: what you create.

Creating engaging content is a proactive way for you to show up on social media, provide value, make it easy for the tides of the algorithm to turn in your favor. And while every industry is very different, I think there are a few tricks that make it straightforward to come up with content that your audience will engage with.

Ask Questions First

Start here and be specific.

Here are my top 5 questions when I create social media content:

1. Who is the ideal audience?
2. What do they need - internal and external?
3. How does that relate to what you're about?
4. What pain points are they experiencing?
5. What's keeping them from solving their problem?

These questions help me understand who I'm talking to and what is going to be helpful, valuable, and compelling for them. When you understand that, creating content becomes very simple.

Dr. Mark Goulston, executive coach and author of Get Out of your Own Way said, "Understanding a person's hunger and responding to it is one of the most potent tools you'll ever discover for getting through to anyone you meet in business or your personal life."

It's true. Understanding your audience is KEY.

Make Engagement Easy

How do we make it easy for our followers to engage? To answer this question, I'm going to ask you to turn inward again. What were the last five things you found on social media and shared? My guess is that they fall into one of the following categories:

1. Relatable - something you've experienced stated in a new/funny/insightful way
2. Identifiable - something true about yourself (or something you want to be true of you) stated in a new/funny/insightful way
3. Valuable - information that helps you solve a problem or move closer to a goal
4. Laudable - something you respect, support, or believe in (think politics, religion, charity, community)

What do these things have in common? Well, they all serve (at least) one of two purposes: They make you the hero or they help you build community. These things are core to how we relate to the world around us. We want to be valuable and we want to belong.

When you create content that allows your audience to feel value and belonging, they will want to share and engage.

Your Turn

• Who is your audience?
• What content is going to be helpful, valuable, and compelling for them?
• How are you making them the hero?
• How are you helping them build community and feel like they belong?