No life remains untouched by the parallel world that we call social media. You might not be a part of what is generally considered social media like Facebook or Instagram.
But what if I told you that there’s no way a person can be off social media? Believe me when I say that your regular messaging apps like WhatsApp are also a part of social media.
Social media platforms initially emerged as digital ways to share media and connect with other people. But they have now become powerful tools for businesses to connect with their audience and drive conversions.
Keep reading this blog post to find out how you can use the potential of social media content for the benefit of your business.
Step 1: Understand Your Audience
Are you creating content that truly addresses your audience’s questions, or it is purely based on what you think they want?
There’s a big difference between the two, and it’s easy to skip this crucial step when developing social media content.
Effective content – the kind that converts – should:
- Be aimed at a clearly defined audience.
- Address a common issue or challenge your audience faces.
- Offer genuine value by providing a solution (this may sound obvious, but there’s still plenty of content out there that lacks value and exists just for the sake of it).
You must first know your audience to really understand what they need:
- What problems do they regularly face?
- What frustrates them?
- What excites and motivates them?
By understanding them on a deeper level, you’ll be able to craft content tailored specifically to their needs.
Your job as a social media content marketer is to identify your audience’s problems and pain points. Once you understand these, you can create impactful content that offers solutions. By doing this, you will:
- Build trust in your brand.
- Encourage readers to return for more content.
- Motivate them to subscribe to your newsletter and engage with you across other platforms.
- And ultimately, give them a reason to convert.
Step 2: Headlines That Grab Attention
This may come across as a cliche, but it’s worth emphasizing that your headlines are crucial.
It’s simple: if your headline doesn’t grab attention and spark interest, people won’t click to read further. And if they don’t read your content, your conversion rate won’t improve either.
Given below are some tips to help you write more effective headlines that lead to conversions:
- Your headline should clearly communicate what the content is about so that readers know exactly what they’ll gain from it.
- Include numbers in your headlines. A Buzzsumo study of 100 million headlines showed that using numbers can significantly increase clicks. Interestingly, the number 10 is particularly engaging.
- Use emotional triggers in your headlines when appropriate. Emotional language can drive more traffic and engagement. While it’s not suitable for every situation, hyperbolic phrases like “tears of joy,” “make you cry,” and “shocked to see” were found to generate more interaction in the same Buzzsumo study.
- Focus on addressing a single pain point your audience faces. This keeps your headline clear and impactful. For instance, “How to Increase Dwell Time” is more focused than “How to Increase Dwell Time and Boost Your SEO with Increased User Engagement.”
Step 3: Readability with Clear and Structured Content
Great social media content isn’t just about delivering information; it’s about crafting an engaging experience that’s easy to consume and keeps readers coming back for more.
Here’s an example from the Virtual Blog in a post about “Crawlability and Indexability: The Foundation of Effective SEO”
To make your content more readable and enjoyable, keep this checklist in mind:
- Start with an introduction that connects with your reader’s problems or clearly outlines what the content is about and what answers they will get from it. Including a “Key takeaways” or TL;DR section can be helpful.
- Make your content easy to read so that people stick with it. People walk away from long and dense paragraphs. Instead, use short sentences, brief paragraphs, bullet points, and lists. Remember, many people will be reading on small mobile screens, possibly while multitasking or facing distractions like social media and notifications. A well-organized content with plenty of white space is always more welcome and easier to follow.
- Breaking up your content with subheadings makes it much easier for the audience to read and skim through the text.
- Incorporate visuals like screenshots, photos, videos, and GIFs throughout your content. These add variety. give readers mental “breaks” and make the content more engaging.
- Keep your language simple and approachable. Avoid jargon or overly complex terms. Always aim for language that resonates with your audience and matches their style.
Step 4: Personalized Social Media Content For the Win
An essential step in boosting conversions from your content is to create personalized content for the different segments of your audience.
No matter your niche, your audience isn’t a single group with identical questions, needs, or desires. Typically, there are several buyer personas that represent different types of potential customers.
To increase conversions, it’s important to craft content that targets each of these segments individually, addressing their specific needs and challenges.
Step 5: Transform Your Content with Interactive Features
With the availability of affordable (or even free) online content creation tools and AI generative tools, producing interactive content has become much easier. Research indicates that interactive content optimization can be a powerful part of your marketing strategy.
Interactive content generates more than 52% more engagement compared to static content.
When users interact with your content, it’s great for your business: they spend more time on your site and are more likely to return, which boosts the chances of conversions.
A few popular forms of interactive content that you can consider adding are:
- Mini-games: Studies show that mini-games are highly effective during the awareness and discovery phases.
- Interactive infographics: Infographics are popular but adding interactive elements can make them even more engaging and enjoyable.
- Calculators: These tools add value by providing useful information and supporting your content strategy.
- Quizzes and polls: People like to have their opinions heard, and polls are a great way to show you value their input. Quizzes and polls also satisfy natural curiosity about others’ opinions or quiz results, which can drive higher engagement and conversions.
Step 6: Transform Your Content into Lead Magnets
A simple way to boost lead generation is by including lead magnets in your content.
Lead magnets are valuable content pieces that require readers to give their email addresses or other personal details to access them. While some marketers might be wary of lead magnets because they require personal information, they can be highly effective when used correctly. They help engage your audience and build an email list for future nurturing.
To be most effective, lead magnets should be well-targeted to your audience’s interests and needs.
For example, if someone is reading a guide on ranking your website on the first page of search results, they might be eager to download a checklist outlining all the steps to optimize their content for top rankings. They’d likely provide their email address to get that checklist.
Try incorporating some of the following effective lead magnets:
- PDF downloads (especially for in-depth, valuable content like how-to guides)
- Checklists
- Templates
- Cheat sheets
- Reports
- Worksheets
- Case studies
- Formulas
- Courses
- Infographics
Step 7: Tracking Your Content’s Effectiveness
To boost conversions from your content, it’s crucial to monitor your content marketing results closely. This helps you understand:
- Which types of content drive the most conversions? (e.g., listicles, how-to guides, interactive content, etc.)
- Common features of your top-performing content.
- Which headlines attract the most clicks and traffic?
- Which content isn’t yielding enough results to justify its creation?
You can gather this information by tracking your web analytics. Google Analytics is a great starting point for this.
Keep an eye on metrics like page views, time spent on the page, and bounce rate, and observe how these metrics change over time. Set up conversion goals to specifically track how well your blogs and other content perform in terms of conversion.
Start by defining your conversion goals, which can vary widely depending on your business or campaign. For instance, clear conversion goals could include purchasing a product or booking an appointment. Other examples of conversions might be filling out a contact form, downloading an ebook, or subscribing to a newsletter. These mid-funnel conversions can lead to ultimate conversions (paying customers) if nurtured effectively.
Filler Content is a No Go
Creating content just for the sake of it will get you not even close to the results you’re looking for. With the rise of generative AI writing tools, marketers may have gotten caught up in the excitement of producing, but it seems this approach was premature. Google favors human-created, original, and authentic content over AI-generated content.
Instead of just producing content, focus on crafting pieces that provide significant value to platform-specific content for the audience. This approach will help you increase traffic, engagement, and, most importantly, conversions.