How To Create Social Media Content For Business

Thanks for joining us on hero or TV. Today, we are here with Michelle McCullough definitely a social media. expert and we’re talking about how to create content for social media In 2008 when social media took off, as a business, we had to sit down and decide

how we were going to play, where we were going to play. And really what we were going to say online. As a marketing person, I wasn’t satisfied with some businesses being super successful online through social media and other

businesses not being super successful. I knew there had to be a system, there had to be a blueprint, there had to be a better way the systems junkie and me knew that there had to be a cookie cutter approach even to help people

individually implement social media into their business. So, for start at princess we went to work. We loved playing in Twitter. Facebook was new at the time we kind of play a little bit with Facebook but we sat down and we use Twitter as

our framework and we started to use what we were learning with other clients as well. But, what I loved about playing in social media was that as a business we figured out it’s not just being online it’s really creating the type of content

that is important for your business that helps people understand your story and your message. So today, I want to share with you how to create great content into your social media so that you know what to say. Now, I believe there are four

different types of social media status updates the first one is what I call service. It has nothing to do with sales you’re not talking about your products or services but you’re talking a lot about your industry and key tips,

strategies, ideas, it can be quotes. Quotes from you, other quotes from industry leaders, but showing up to serve is the first and most important way to build content for your audience. When people come online to social media they don’t

come online to buy. They might want to amazon to buy or another purchasing site but they don’t come online to social media to buy. They come for one of two reasons, information and connection. And, so you need to fill that need for

information and give them the information they need to know more about you and the industry. Now, you can talk about your business, you can talk about employees in your company, you can talk about how your company got started, or

the CEO, you can talk about… clients and individuals and success stories that work. But all with the area to serve never to make a sale. Not talking about your products and services and you can talk a little bit

about features and benefits but you have to be careful that you’re always bringing it back to service. And, service posts are again the number one most important you’re going to do about fifty percent of your social media status

updates on serving and providing a lot of value to your audience online. Now, the second type of post is what we call socialize posts. Now, if people come online for information and connection than what they need is questions to

connect with you as a business, and also to connect with other like-minded individuals that you might have on your profiles and sites and social media platforms. They like feeling like they belong. And so, if you can create a sense

of community through your social media sites, then you’ll get more attraction you’ll get more engagement and you’ll get more interest when you actually do sell because they feel like they belong. so the best way to do that is through

socialize posts with your questions. You can use who, what, when, where, why, and some of my favorites are, tell me. Tell me more about this. Tell me what you do every day. Now obviously, you want to stay connected to your industry so for example if you

are in the fitness world you might talk about tell me what you do for your fitness regimen. What is your favorite type of exercise, how many hours of sleep do you get a night. If you’re in the medical field you might ask people soft

questions if you go too deep and ask too personal a question then they feel like you’re really shining the light on them and they start to feel a little bit uncomfortable. So ask questions that remove them if you have a really

personal business. What’s the best medical advice you ever received? or what’s the best tip you’ve heard online to keep yourself healthy and energized? Ask them to share a tip instead of one step removed. This works really well in

medical and financial industries where you ask them to share advice that they’ve heard rather than their own personal experiences. But questions can be really great and they interact with each other but they can also interact

with you as a business or a brand as a small business, it’s really easy to interact with a lot of the comments that are there. As your business grows, you might not be able to respond to every single comment or answer to a question

but just being involved in the conversation from time to time helps them to connect with you as a brand and also helps them to connect with others. And the great part is, is that, when you’re working within your social

media, Engagement is really key in the algorithms in every platform the more engagement that you have through comments, through likes, through shares, through interaction, help your posts do so much better and more people can see

them. So questions are great because as people interact it’s a lot easier to comment on a question than it is to comment on a tip or a quote or something else. So socialize questions aren’t just good to build a sense of community but

help the overall health of your algorithm. Now, the third type of social media status update is what I call “sign”. Getting them to sign with you in some way shape or form. Now, I’m not asking them to sign a contract but because I’m

an alliteration junkie and the first one was service in the second is socialized the third has to be an s2 which is sign. get them to sign with you in some way have them make the next step of commitment and so what that could be is

you could get them to sign up for your email list or you could get them to cross-promote with you through another platform maybe you have a big Twitter following and you’re trying to grow in snapchat or Facebook. You might say, “hey

we post daily” or “every seven seconds on snapchat follow us there”. So you can use signs to cross-promote and to get people to come to you in other locations. My favorite way of course is to get people to grow your email list. I think growing

your email list is the money in your social media strategy and if you can get them to engage with you, and get them to give you email, then you can nurture them in additional ways. In social media, there are so many distractions and you might

say that there’s lots of distractions in their inbox. but if they open that email from you, for that minute for however long they’re looking at that email, they are dedicated to just you and your message and the distractions of all of

the other things happening on social media go away. So, email can be a great way to suck people in to give them some additional messaging so if you can have a great way to get them to give you your email through social media, I think

that’s one of the best strategies and tools for utilizing great content through social strategy. Now that’s probably about fifteen percent of the time you’ll want to get them to cross-promote to other outlets or to

sign up for your email list but the last one is to sell. So, it is okay to sell on social media but it’s only about ten percent at a time many people because their business think they should be always sharing promotions,

are always sharing products, we’re always featuring the latest deals your prices or bundles and they wake up every morning going I’m a business, what should I share today that will get people to act? well I need to make money

so how about I make this promotion or whatever. That is a strategy that might make you think will work in your business but it doesn’t work in the psychology of those who are sifting through their social media feeds. So

while it’s okay some time to time to share a sale, or two, or promotion, remember, that you need to lead with lots of other content. Fill them up with lots of service posts with tips advice and information give them strategy and

questions where they can interact with your audience. Help them to sign up for other outlets that you use and then sell ten percent of the time and they might respond to that message because you’ve nurtured them throughout the process.

Now, you don’t have to only wait to a certain time to do sales. When I do these, I create a number of different posts for a number of different of each of these categories and I go in and I shuffle them and the sales post will show up

from time to time and that’s okay. So, that leads us to the next part of this is if you know what to say. How can you go in and create this type of content in a strategic manner for you so that you’re not creating content every single

day. Now for me, and what I tell my clients is that you should be spending about two hours a month generating social media content. Now, for me it works best if I do it in one, 2 hour period. For some of my clients, they can’t focus that

long or they’re just getting into this system and strategy of creating content for social media so they’ll break it up into 30 minute segments and they’ll do 30 minutes once a week. Either way, create a system and a strategy for creating

your social media content. It will eliminate the stress that comes from every single day creating the content that you need and it will help your brain focus on creating an overall strategy. The greatest part about this is

that for some people they’re kind of throw all over the place in their social media they’ve got a number of different messages but if you focus for a month at a time you can then choose a theme for an entire month. Maybe you’re going to

choose for the whole month to talk about one specific area of your business and the next month you’re going to move to a different area of your business in your industry. So, it gives you the ability to really plan create strategic messages

and tell the story of your business throughout the course of your social media time instead of being all over the place with a variety of different products, services, topics, and conversations. So, not only is it great

for your audience to have a variety of messages it’s great for you to have a variety of messages but a system and a way to keep track of them. Now, for some people they’ll put them straight into a social media program you can schedule

directly into Facebook I keep all of my social media posts and spreadsheets in fact I have every single social media post that I have ever written since 2010 and I’ve kept track of everything that I’ve ever said every single month, every

quote I’ve used, every link I’ve used to a blog post, every pictures that I’ve ever used. And sometimes, I go back and use things from previous years and it’s been a while, my audience has changed, my audience has grown, and

I’m able to utilize some of my best quotes in some of my best links and other places. So, as you consider your social media strategy, I hope that you’ll consider the end user. I hope you’ll remember the content that they need and

I also hope that you make a system for you. So that you can keep great content coming and flowing into your social media strategy. I hope you enjoyed this episode of hero or TV and thanks so much

Michelle for sharing your wisdom with us. You can find a lot more details about Michelle in the description below be sure to subscribe we have new episodes every single day and remember to live on purpose, make a difference, and

be the hero.