Top 8 tips for creating engaging social media content

The content you post on your social media channels is an opportunity to connect with your audience, reach new customers and grow a following. Social media has become a hugely powerful tool in recent years. 95 million photos and videos are added to Instagram a day, 350 million photos to Facebook every 24 hours and 2 million posts, including photos, articles and videos, each day on LinkedIn. But with so much content out there, it’s important that what you post on your social media connects and engages with your audience. 

What is social media content?

Social media content refers to the videos, images, text, links or graphics you share on platforms like Facebook, X, Linkedin, TikTok and Instagram. Social posts can be constructed out of anything really. Unless you’re posting for personal satisfaction, sharing content on social media is typically driven by the desire to engage with or encourage an action from a target audience. You might want to persuade potential customers to purchase a new product, inform your audience about a specific topic or raise awareness about an issue. 

Why is social media a great tool for engaging with your audience?

There are more than 5 billion people using social media around the world, so chances are the audience you want to reach are going to be using these platforms in some form. Aside from providing you with access to potentially a huge audience, there are a number of benefits to social media. You can share information instantly with your audience, build online communities, network with others, promote and establish your brand, and, if you can capture the imagination of your audience, grow rapidly. 

Social media allows you to share a whole multitude of different digital assets with your audience online including video, photos, graphics and text. You can get started with social media with no or minimal budget, only needing to invest when you want to raise the quality of your content or put money behind paid advertising to grow your audience. 

8 tips for creating engaging social media content

Setting yourself apart on social media is the biggest challenge you’ll face when you get started. With so many companies, organisations and individuals vying for attention on social platforms, you’ll need to create social media content which engages and resonates with your audience. We’ve pulled together a couple of helpful tips to keep in mind when planning your content for social media.

1. Harness the power of video

If you’re not already using video on social media, then you need to start taking advantage of this powerful digital medium. The popularity of video on social platforms has skyrocketed in recent years, helped by many platform’s algorithms prioritising video over other forms of social content. Social networks like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, for example, have all become essentially video first platforms, contributing to the rise in popularity of short form video content. 

To harness the power of video on social media, you should focus on creating short, sharp videos which concentrate on your work, products or core areas of focus. Think about creating videos which allow viewers to go behind the scenes, explain topics related to your area of work, or include testimonials with customers rating your product or service.

2. Include a clear call to action

Whenever possible, make sure that your social media content includes a clear call to action. Whilst you will want your social content to inform or entertain audiences, you’ll want to encourage users to take action. Actions could include signing up to a newsletter, purchasing a product, making an enquiry, subscribing or donating to a specific cause. Deciding on the action that you want your audience to take is a core part of content creation and social media marketing.

3. Showcase your expertise

You are an expert in your field, so show this off and highlight this to your audience. By putting your credentials and experience front and centre you can build trust with your social following and establish yourself as a key voice in your industry.

If you are a car mechanic, for example, creating content which showcases your technical knowledge is a great way to show potential customers that you are to be trusted and will encourage them to purchase from you. You could create an explainer video talking through common issues people have with their cars and how you would go about repairing them, or you could do a Q&A post where you answer questions sent in by customers and users on social media.

4. Learn about your audience

Before signing up to a social platform and creating any content, it’s important to identify who is your target audience. Knowing who you are trying to reach will help you pick which social networks on which to make a profile and focus your efforts. LinkedIn, for example, is a great place to reach professionals and target specific sectors or industries. 

Learning what engages with your target audience will help you create better content which connects with the people you want to reach. Take time to research and think about what your audience cares about, what they engage with elsewhere on social media, and from whom they already follow and buy. Having this information will help inform your creative decisions and decide whether to post a video, photo or graphic to promote a specific topic, product or event.

5. Experiment and iterate 

Wherever you start with social media content, the only way is up. Especially when you’re just starting out, you want to use any opportunity you have to test out new ideas and see how they perform. Lots of your ideas will inevitably fail, but you will find success. You just need to focus on trying out new ideas and seeing what resonates with the people whom you are trying to reach. It only takes for one video to go viral to get yourself seen online or for word to gradually spread about you and your company, and before you know it, your social presence is growing faster than ever before.

Creating multiple versions of the same piece of content is a great way to test ideas out without making much more work for yourself. You could post the same information as two videos, each with a different opening, as photo and caption, and as an infographic. Do this over a couple of weeks or months, spacing these out and see how they perform when compared to one another. 

6. Focus on storytelling

People don’t like being sold to. In the same way that you wouldn’t answer the door to a salesperson, social media users don’t like to consume content which is overtly focused on selling or marketing them something. Instead you should focus on the storytelling when producing content for social networks, this will make it far more engaging and shareable. 

A bakery owner, for example, might want to produce content which tells the story of their business. This could include explaining how the business was set up, who works in the bakery and what inspired the owner to get into baking in the first place. Storytelling doesn’t just need to focus on your personal story or the story of your business or organisation. It can also take the form of telling the story of how your products are made, the experience of a customer or sharing your future plans.

7. Keep up with trends

Staying ahead of trends on social media can be a full time job! One week it's dancing to this music, the next it’s filming your videos from an unusual angle. Whilst you might not be able to respond to all social trends, you could find success trying out a few as and when they happen. You need to be responsive though and jump on trends quickly, as the sooner you can respond the greater the potential reward. 

8. Think about the first 3 seconds

Especially when producing video for social media, you need to think about the 3 second rule. On average, you have 3 seconds to capture the attention of someone scrolling through their social media feed. So those first few seconds of any video content you produce need to hook the attention of a viewer and maintain it, otherwise they’ll just swipe onto the next piece of content. 

Jumping ahead to the main bit of action at the start of your video is one good way to do this, before then switching back to before the action happened. This gives viewers a teaser of what to expect if they continue watching and a reason to stick around to watch until the end.

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Hello! We're Sheeran Media, an all in one content production company with expertise in video, podcasts, animation and design. If you have a project you need support with, then get in touch. We’d love to help!