..the power of creating engaging content

Creating content for your social platforms is more than just taking a nice image, creating good content for you business can help to increase sales, develop brand awareness and encourage community engagement. 

Let us take a stab in the dark, your feed and website reads pretty much like this… look whats new, on sale, buy this, did you know we are doing this, going to be here, stocked here. Don’t despair, creating engaging content is all about understanding what are your end goals. To start, you can ask yourself these four questions:

– Who is the content for? (…this isn’t you) 
– What are you hoping to get out of the content?
– What are you hoping your audience will get out of the content?
– Why would your audience stop to look at and engage in your content?

These three questions can help you understand why your content isn’t getting any real traction. Effective content is about making a statement, drawing your audience in and making them want to come back again.

A common mistake that a lot of small businesses make is that the content they create is all about the sale. They miss the fact that social media platforms and their website are designed to draw them back but if all you’re giving them is a constant sales pitch, this can create boredom and ultimately disengagement. 

This tactic will work if they are part of your core audience, these are the diehard fans who want to know what’s new, what’s on sale, what is coming up but will also only count for a small part of your potential audience. It is this same core audience that will continue to buy and return meaning you don’t need to attract them – but that doesn’t mean ignore or forget about them, this is important to remember. 

So, who do you want to create content for? The scrollers… who are they, they are the ones flicking through social media that you have a split second to catch their attention and win them over.

Which is why you need to ask yourself again…
– Who is the content for? 
– What are you hoping to get out of the content?
– What are you hoping your audience will get out of the content?
– Why would your audience stop to look at and engage in your content?

Who is this content for?
This will give you the baseline of who you want to see the content. The answer will guide you on how you create your content.

What are you hoping to get out of the content?
Think beyond the direct sales pitch, think about creating and fostering a community will convert to sales as well.

What are you hoping your audience will get out of the content? 
How does the content, help get you to the sale, awarenesses, information you want them to know. 

Why would your audience stop to look at and engage in your content?
What’s going to make them stop and look and then take the next step and actually read the caption? Because let’s face it, a picture can say a thousand but it can’t say everything unfortunately. So getting your audience to want to read what you have to say is an important step in achieving your content goal.

Taking the time to work through these questions will give you the insight into how you make your content or direct your content to be made.

Ultimately great content will drive your audience to make informed decisions about your business that will develop your community. It is this community that will help your content move being a basic sales pitch to something your audience will want to keep coming back to and in turn drive sales and business goals!