The key to success on social media starts with your content. Each post can potentially reach people anywhere in the world—giving you new opportunities to share your brand’s story anytime you choose. But creating high-quality, relevant timely content on a daily (or even weekly) basis can be quite the challenge. So, how do you deliver the right content to keep your social engine running? Here are three social media marketing tips to feed your content pipeline:
User-Generated Content (UGC)
Leverage the photos and videos your customers share about your brand or product.
It’s 2018, 11 years since Facebook first launched advertising, and posts written from a business-to-consumer perspective just don’t work as well anymore. Why? Because when people are on social media, it means they actually want to be social and connect with others. They don’t want to be sold something…that is unless they trust the brand trying to sell to them.
When brands share user-generated content, it builds trust and demonstrates how much they care about their social media community. As future customers see those UGC posts, they’re more likely to engage with a brand because they trust the content they’re seeing. It’s basic human nature—people trust people before they trust the brand.
Here at Amplify, we apply a three-step process to sourcing UGC:
- We actively search for mentions, hashtags, comments, tweets, and more to find media that will resonate best with each brand audience.
- We reach out to the customer for permission to share their content (people are usually more than happy to share).
- We share the content on the brand’s social accounts, which makes customers happy and encourages them to post more in the future.
The fun part? It’s a win-win for both the brands and their customers.
The example below became one of the most engaging posts AKG has ever published, and it was all from a simple, “Can we share this to our social media?”
Sometimes UGC can turn into something more… Leading us into the second way to feed your social content pipeline:
Influencer Marketing
Collaborate with an influential person on social media to promote a product, service, or campaign.
When a brand teams up with an influencer on social media, the goal is to increase brand awareness and reach a new audience. By working with individuals who identify with your brand, you can spread the word of your product or service outside of your own social media community. But when identifying influencers, make sure they fit with your brand goals and objectives.
During the influencer selection process, try to establish a strong relationship—not just a one-off “post-and-done” arrangement. You can do this by setting up influencer goals and a simple check list that helps both you and the influencers know what’s expected of them and when.
Depending on the size of your influencer’s audience, you’ll need to adjust goals case by case. Remember, bigger artists/influencers usually need more incentive to get involved, so you may need to offer more than free product or a discount.
Our favorite type of influencer is a truly passionate customer with a strong personal following. Above we showed a top-performing post that was used for AKG UGC. Just about a week after the post was published, AKG added the user as an official influencer for their brand. That means more content will be coming down the pipeline—all from an individual that the AKG audience has already trusted. That’s another win-win!
So, we’ve talked about UGC and Influencer Marketing, but now let’s talk about original brand content.
Original Content
Organize your content into ongoing campaigns to help you stay on track.
Having a consistent social media calendar for original content is a great way to lengthen the life and purpose of your curated posts. But let’s say your brand has dozens of products to cover. How can you get started?
We suggest selecting 3-4 key products to focus on, and then creating 5+ individual posts for each product. If possible, try to keep it fresh by incorporating different media sources (photo, video, website blogs). By using this calendar strategy, you can make a batch of original content last for 1-2 months—all while still leaving room for UGC, Influencer Marketing campaigns, trends and any other important announcements.
Feeding your social content pipeline can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be. With these simple social media marketing tips, you can always have a successful social content pipeline that highlights your brand in the best way possible.
Looking for help with your brand? We’d love to chat social. Contact Amplify today and learn more about our social media services.
