Social Media Content with Purpose

This month’s Content Club Quarterly Planning Session reminded me of the importance of having a purpose behind the content you create, especially for social media posts.

No matter what you are creating …what do you want it to do for your small business? How can it help you? What will it enable you to achieve? Importantly, what value will the content give your audience?

This is why I highly recommend to my clients and Clubbers that they pick a purpose – it will make your content so much more effective.

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Social media and 5 different purposes

For social media, there are 5 different purposes that I think can help you to make varied and interesting content and post types. It also really helps when you use my interconnected content method of picking a single goals and then a related topic or ‘theme’ on which all of your monthly content is based.

Let’s explore the different purposes for your upcoming social media posts:

Educate

I love creating content with this purpose – I want to educate my followers (this goes for blogs, as well as social media!).

Education posts can take a variety of forms. They can include tips and guidance, as well as advice and ‘how to’. You can share ‘dos’, as well as ‘do nots’.

They work really well as carousel posts (i.e. a series of images, accompanied by an explanatory caption), as well as for video content.

You can also use social media posts to share and link to other ‘education content’, such as blog posts, LinkedIn articles or a YouTube video, if it suits a longer format.

Remember to encourage people to ‘save’ these posts, in particular. It’s a good call to action (CTA) to remember.

Engage

The purpose of these posts is to get engagement, i.e. reactions and questions, but importantly it’s about you learning from your audience.

Social media content that has the purpose to engage, often takes the following forms:

• Polls
• Asking questions
• Asking for opinions
• Asking for advice
• Asking for recommendations
• Sharing a story or experience and asking for a reaction
• Encouraging others to share their story or experience on your chosen topic

Make the requests as genuine as possible and think about how you will use the information. These types of posts are brilliant for me for inspiring future blog posts, as well as webinar topics, for example.

Asking for comments, reactions and engagement is so often forgotten about.

Convince

I used to call this content purpose ‘credibility’, but I needed a nice verb for consistency!!! So, here we have convince.

Convince content is all about proving to your audience why you could be the perfect solution for them. It’s about demonstrating and proving your experience and your abilities.

Content with the purpose of ‘convincing’ can take many forms, including:

• Testimonials
• Sharing past work examples
• Sharing past experiences
• Highlighting qualifications and training
• Sharing lessons learned
• Illustrating results

This is not about boasting or bragging, it’s about telling your audiences about what you can do and why you could be the perfect person or business for them. It’s about growing trust and authority too.

Share

I think this purpose is often overlooked but I think it’s really important, especially on platforms like LinkedIn, which is an ideal place to share others’ content.

Sharing articles (that you have actually read!) from industry leads, thought leaders, professional bodies and other respected content creators demonstrates that you continue to learn about your profession and area of business. You can also share content from fellow business owners that you think would be useful or interesting for your audience too.

Sharing doesn’t have to be a one-click ‘repost’ …you also don’t have to agree with every word of the content. Sharing another post or piece of content is a great opportunity for you to share your own thoughts, a slightly different perspective or an additional idea.

You can also share your own ‘old’ content – a past blog post or video – for example. Give it another chance and an opportunity for new followers to take a look.

Sell

Whilst ‘sharing content’ is overlooked…content with the purpose of selling is too often shied away from. Remember we are business owners…we have to share sales information. We have to help people to buy from us (that’s all selling is!).

Selling posts should be really clear and to the point in most cases. You don’t have to be posting every day, but at least once a month is a good idea. Remind people what they can buy from you. It shouldn’t be everything but one or two specific things.

Also the call to action or overall message doesn’t have to be always ‘Buy now!’. It could be an invite to book a discovery call. You may just want to ask people to get in touch or to ask for a quote. Or, you could just invite people to find out more via your website.

Purposeful social media posts

I think when you have a purpose for your social media post it really enhances the content you want to write. You are clear about why your are creating the content and what the desired outcome is. My making high quality content you are more likely to offer value to your audience too.

If you are looking for support with your content creation, why not book a discovery chat today. Tell me what you’re struggling with and let me see how I can help. I love making content creation more enjoyable and more effective for small business owners.