Is your goal to create original content that will help your users address their needs and improve their perception of your company? Then this is the perfect article for you! We are going to show you how to develop a strategy that will make you successful in the long run. You will also learn what to watch out for when posting content and where to post.

Setting Clear Goals

Before you start posting content, you should ask yourself what exactly you want to achieve. To increase your success in the long run, we recommend using the SMART-principle:

1. Specific
Clearly define what you want to achieve.

2. Measurable
Use measurable numbers, such as follower growth, engagement, or paid and organic reach to describe your goal. To measure these metrics, social media tools like Fanpagekarma can be used.

3. Achievable
Your goal has to be achievable and realistic. Increasing the number of your followers from 100 to 100,000 followers in a month, for example, is an unrealistic goal. 

4. Relevance 
A relevant social media marketing goal is in accordance with the success of your company. 

5. Time-based
If your goal isn’t time-bound, it’s hard to measure.

For example, “I want to grow a lot in a month”, is a poorly chosen goal. “I want to grow my business’s Instagram account from 1,000 to 15,000 followers in one year,” is a much better-chosen goal, as it is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based. With a clearly defined goal, you have the best foundation to produce successful content.

The Criteria for High-Quality Content

Now that you have a goal in mind, we can finally talk about what makes for good content. High-quality content meets these criteria:

1. Precisely tailored to fit your target group
Make sure your target audience is clearly defined so that you can match your content to fit their needs. 

2. Contains little to no direct advertisement
Direct advertisement is annoying! Did you know that almost every fourth post on Instagram in our feed consists of advertisements? While advertising your product might be necessary, it should be done in a subtle way without telling followers directly to buy your product. 

3. Builds a bond to the company or the product 
Keep in mind that your content should reflect your company or your product in a positive manner and trigger emotions in potential customers.

4. Offers clear value to the followers
Don’t waste your followers’ time. If your content isn’t relevant for your target audience, it doesn’t belong in your feed. Cute cat videos do not belong on Instagram pages of sports car manufacturers.

5. Is authentic, high-quality and up-to-date
If you don’t post regularly, your content is stolen or simply not authentic, your followers will quickly lose interest. Therefore it is very important to know your audience in order to publish new and authentic content regularly. 

6. Engage with your followers
A good way to engage with your followers is to ask them for their opinion. Putting surveys in your stories or just generally asking in your captions is a great way to achieve engagement. Every reaction of your followers increases your engagement rate and therefore the relevance with which your content is rated. On top of increasing your relevance, your followers feel more valued when they are asked for their opinion.

A good example of a company that meets all criteria is Blendtec. Blendtec sells mixers and produces a series called “Will It Blend?” on Youtube. The videos test the blend-ability of various different objects, like iPhones or Amazon echoes. Their audience consists of people who are potentially interested in a mixer (1.). You will only see the price of the blender being directly mentioned when there is a discount (2.). Usually, however, the product is only linked in the description. The videos are quite funny and put a twist on how you would really use a mixer, which makes them authentic. By producing the videos regularly, points 3-5 are also fulfilled. At the end of the video, Blendtec asks their subscribers what they want to be blended next (6.). Watching these videos really seems to create the urge to buy one of your own to try your own experiments. Maybe not with your iPhone or Amazon Echo though.

To gather inspiration for new content or to evaluate preexisting content, can be used as a social media tool.

Not all Content Is Suitable for Every Network

Now that you have a strategy and you know what makes good content, all that’s left is paying attention to what platform you publish what type of content on. But don’t worry, we’ve created guidelines for you here as well:

Our advice to you: reuse the same content in a slightly modified form on different platforms. For example, if you publish a ten-minute informative video on YouTube, you can also post a slightly trimmed version on Facebook and Twitter. On Instagram, you can then link the video in your bio and post a short version or an image of it. In your picture/video description, you then mention the link in your bio. The same applies to articles you publish on your blog. On Facebook and Twitter, you can directly post the link with a short description in your feed, while on Instagram you have to make the detour via a picture and the link in your bio. Verified accounts or accounts that have more than 10.000 followers on Instagram, can also post links over the “swipe up” function in their story.

If you’re interested in finding out the best time to post, then you should read this article.

Conclusion

To maximize your success, you should stick to the SMART-principle when planning goals. Make sure that your target audience is precisely defined and that your content always adds clear value to your followers. Last but not least, make sure you use the right platforms for each type of content. Once you’ve mastered these steps, your content is prone to success.

If you would like to track your success, automate your posting or manage all your social media pages over one tool, then try Fanpagekarma for free. 

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