7 Quick Ways to Improve Your Social Media Content
Even for the most experienced and creative of social media managers, planning social media content can be difficult. Knowing what to post, when to post it can be tough, and knowing where to find good social media content when you run out of ideas can be even tougher.
Thankfully, the team here at Goho are brimming with the creativity, experience, and know-how needed to kick ass at social media. However, we know not every business can afford to outsource their social media activity right now. So, in the hope that one day your businesses will grow big and strong (thanks to our advice, of course!) and when they do, you’ll consider bringing us on board, we’re offering our top 10 social media tips free of charge. Check them out below.
Do your research!
Like any aspect of marketing, stab-in-the-dark social media doesn’t work. To resist the temptation to ad-hoc your SM activity, you should develop a robust strategy for all your channels. Researching your industry, audience, and competitors on each platform is key to developing a social media strategy that works for your business.
For each channel that you plan to use, establish your audience and objective(s), then write a sentence or two about what aspect of your business you wish to express via that channel. For example, if the channel is Twitter, you may wish to portray the voice and personality of your brand whilst keeping followers updated on the latest activity in your business. Then illustrate your key ‘content pillars’ (i.e. types and themes of content). These may be repeated across channels, but should be relevant to your audience and objectives.
Plan ahead, but stay flexible!
Your social media plan should be robust but not rigid. Planning social media content ahead of time doesn’t just help to fill space when you’re out of ideas, but it provides you with an opportunity to ensure you cover all your content pillars and target each audience equally. Without a doubt, you should always have a calendar of content pre-planned at least to the ideas stage.
However, particularly in the past year, the world is changing every single day. What was a prevalent topic yesterday might be completely irrelevant or, worse still, extremely offensive today. Having a social media strategy doesn’t have to mean you never stray from the plan, You should be flexible enough to add, replace, delete, or delay content as needed. The best way to do this is to review your content for the day each morning before it is posted.
Use the tools available to you...
Utilise tools like UberSuggest and AnswerThePublic to research the keywords and topics your audience are interested in, and use these keywords to inspire your content.
Then, when you’re planning your content in, use scheduling tools like Later, HootSuite, Falcon, or ContentCal to plan your content ahead of time and easily review your calendar in combination with your pre-planned strategy.
Use a design platform
You don’t have to be a designer to make great social media content. Programs like Canva, Splice, Unfold, Storyluxe and Instories can help you to create and edit high-quality images/videos from your desktop, tablet, or even your phone!
Don’t overcomplicate it
Social media doesn’t have to be complicated. Don’t confuse things further by trying to fit a ton of text on your image, or by writing extremely lengthy captions that your audience never read to the end of. Keep it short and sweet - or, if your content requires a little more detail, spread it out over several posts or break it up with imagery, line breaks, and/or emojis!
Check image resolutions
Social channels don’t like poor quality content.
Most social media channels have minimum image resolution requirements and those that don’t have recommendations. Use your desktop to check your images against the below resolutions before you post them!
Landscape: 1080 x 566 pixels
Portrait: 1080 x 1350 pixels
Square: 1080 x 1080 pixels
Stories: 1080 x 1920 pixels
Post: 1200 x 630 pixels
Stories: 1080 x 1920 pixels
Post: 1200 x 627 pixels
Stories: 1080 x 1920 pixels
Minimum size: 440 x 220 pixels
Pins: 1000 x 1500 pixels
Stories: 1080 x 1920 pixels
TikTok
1080 x 1920
YouTube
Minimum 1280 x 720 pixels
For full image/video recommendations, check out HootSuite’s 2021 guide.
Test and learn
Failures = lessons.
We learn our best when things go wrong. So, no matter how good your content, make sure you note down your on-platform analytics to keep track of what works and what doesn’t.
Many platform analytics capabilities mean you may only be able to see your results for a set period of time, so ensure you collect all the data needed and note it in a report of some form at least once per week, at a set time so the data is comparable. Alternatively, most good social media scheduling platforms also collect analytics data for you, which can save you a lot of time and worry!
