I’ve been noticing a few posts from people on social media recently about how it is boring them. Of course, they are still there, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to post that they are being bored. But boredom is certainly becoming a big impact of the volume of social media use. And businesses are not immune from the bore-factor!
Boring our audience isn’t going to win us any new business. It’s not going to help grow our following and build engagement. Instead it’s going to switch people off, our reach will go down and it’s unlikely we’ll meet our aims on social media.
So, how do we avoid boring our audience on social media?
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Know your audience
Very simply, if you don’t know who your audience is, how do you know what content to give them? Knowing your audience through and through is so important. You need to know as much about them as possible. Saying ‘our audience is SMEs’ isn’t good enough! Who within those SMEs are you trying to target? The MD? HR? Marketing? You need to think about the people you are speaking to. Then understand them. What motivates them? Challenges them? Worries them? Makes them happy? Makes them laugh?
2. Give them what they want
This is something I’ve touched on in many blog posts before, but is such an important point. All too often as businesses, we focus on what we want to tell people and forget what they might want to see. Understanding your audience means you will start to understand they type of content they are interested in. So, give them that content!
3. Let them tell you what they want
One of the easiest ways of understanding what your audience wants is seeing what they engage with. Most social media platforms give you free analytics about your social media content, showing you the engagement you achieved for each post. Use this to guide your future content. Posts with high engagement are likely to be those that work best for your audience, while those with low engagement should be ditched.
4. Pay attention to what works for others
If you are seeing posts from businesses on social media that have received high levels of engagement, think about what has made that post successful. Is the type of media they’ve used? Did they use humour? Did the topic of the post resonate with the audience? Really pay attention to what works in general on social media and see how you can apply it to your business.
5. Use different forms of media
There are so many media options now when it comes to your social media content – images, GIFs, video, live, links…so many options. And yet, most businesses still stick to the safe forms of media and some times don’t use any at all. Increase your media collateral. Film videos, take images, create GIFs and GO LIVE!
If you are stuck with how to engage your audience and give them the right content for them, you might be interested in my LIVE online course – Creating Social Media Content That Sells. You can find all the details of the course by CLICKING HERE.
