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Businesses really divide into two categories – ones that know how to leverage social media and create incredible content, and ones that don’t. Of course, this advantage is much easier to see from the outside, the businesses whose mind is set on not optimizing and not maximizing their exposure on social media can’t imagine the upside. But we as fellow marketers now that this is just plain ignorance. Content is the match that lights up your social strategy and helps you soar to new heights. So let’s talk about that. What makes for good content? And better yet, what elements do you need to have in order to create the best social media content in 2018?
Tell a good story
Social creators are people that tell good stories. We can see this happening on LinkedIn. The top posts with the millions of views and thousands of likes and comments are the ones that tell a compelling and honest story. It can even be something about your own parents, some lessons learned in your childhood, a difficult time that you grew from, anything. Just make it interesting enough for me to keep reading, and make a powerful ending and a powerful message that people would be compelled to respond to. Good storytelling = engagement. But, how long does it have to be?
Lengthy and comprehensive has an upside
Back in the day (like a few years ago, relax baby boomers no one cares about the sixties), content writers would brag about how short and sweet their messages were. Turns out that both social media and search engines prefer longer content. First, Facebook ranks long-form notes pretty high up there. Second, LinkedIn posts tend to be 20-30 lines, those ones that do really well anyway. Also, if you are posting on Medium there are clear advantages in writing longer posts. One of the upsides to longer posts is that people assume that they are comprehensive and start thinking of you as an authority on the subject. The catch is, you actually have to make sure that they are really comprehensive. For example, Neil Patel talks about this strategy of out-writing everyone else. Let’s say that there is a popular post out there that is titled 15 ways to X. Neil would actually write on the same topic but call his 300 ways to X. Neil’s post would clearly outrank the other one because people would see that it’s more comprehensive and would start sharing it like crazy.
In fact, if you see Neil’s blog, every single one of his posts is super long and has a crazy amount of tips in it.
Make lists
Lists are a great way to get people’s attention and to use other people’s audiences. For example, you can make a list of the top LinkedIn influencers and tag each one of them (like this post did). If you make it interesting enough and fun then people will flock to it like bees. (get it? Honey? Bees? Never mind).
Put your emotions on the table
Be real, don’t fake it till you make it. Don’t be afraid to display your emotions and speak about what’s in your heart. This doesn’t have to be cheesy, just real. If you take a look at Josh Fechter’s posts on LinkedIn you will see that he often talks about things that he feels strongly about. Like the post, he did about his employee whose visa was designed even though he is a brilliant dude that got a degree from UC Berkeley. People love these posts because it allows them to take sides and cheer with you. So for real guys and gals, be real.
Be controversial
Ah, you knew I would put this one on this list. Not only being controversial sells, but it actually creates a lot of buzz for your business. If you post something that a lot of people would disagree with you will actually get a lot of engagement (comments, DMs, shares) from both sides. Don’t look to start fights on social media, that’s not what I’m saying. Pick a few topics that you know would get a high response, and that you believe in, and that will add to your business narrative or story and hit publish.
Honesty is key
Be 100% honest in every post. The world wide web wants to know your real opinion, and get to know the real you. And I mean it, it’s not just some marketing gimmick. Everything is so open now, and you hear about all those scandals in the media, whatever you did or thought will only get more visible this year. So plan on that happening and produce some great content around the truth. Customers want to connect with who you really are. What’s the last point on this list? Are you ready?
Analyze, analyze, analyze
Surprise, surprise. You have to be meticulous about analyzing every single piece of content that you produce and publish on social media. What I mean by that is analyzing the traffic that each piece of content brought to the site, the engagement rates, which content categories did better, and which content channels produced the most leads/conversions/sales. The bottom line is sales and you have to track that closely in order to compare the ROI of different social strategies, and only pick the best.
