You don’t need more content — you need more VALUABLE content.
Every business, creator, and cause these days tries to use social media to grow and activate their audience.
Unfortunately, most don’t get much from their efforts because they don’t know what to post.
They follow “best practices” which are not applicable to their specific goals, copy influencers without realizing those influencers grew audiences by being unique, and falsely assume the key to success is the frequency or timing of posts.
It’s not.
“The key to social media success is to craft posts that provide value to your audience.”
That’s easier said than done, so people fall back on posts that are too sales-y, too generic, or too “who cares?” to generate any meaningful results.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
There are simple frameworks you can use to create unique, relevant, and valuable posts for your target audience.
I know because I use these frameworks to help my clients create social posts and see them work across a wide variety of industries and goals.
Following are four effective frameworks I use for myself and my clients, with examples of each.
They’ve inspired successful posts for my For The Interested newsletter, a real estate agent, entertainment industry executive, and marketing partnerships agency, among others.
They can work for you too.
A Quick Note About Your Target Audiences Before We Begin…
The frameworks I’m about to share with you will only be valuable if you use them in alignment with your target audience.
I’ve written a lot about the importance of identifying your target audience before (check out my Ultimate Guide To Growing Your Audience) so I won’t get into much detail here.
Just remember the goal of your social media content is to provide value to your target audience.
“People might value your chocolate cake recipe, but sharing it isn’t going to be a valuable post if your target audience is landscape architects.”
So, with your target audience in mind, give these frameworks a try…
1. Answer Questions People Ask You
If you only try one of these, make this the one.
It’s simple, effective, and guaranteed to deliver value to your audience.
No matter what you do, I’m sure you get asked questions about it all the time — at work, via email, on social platforms, etc.
“People ask you questions about topics in which they value your knowledge. Those questions are a way to identify the expertise you have that others value.”
Write down every question you’re asked and your answers— they’re the basis of your next great social media posts.
You don’t have to be a social media expert to do this — you just have to pay attention. It’s a simple way to harness your expertise, showcase it, and ensure your posts deliver value to your audience.
This blog post you’re reading right now — which will eventually become a post on my For The Interested Facebook page as well — is a perfect example.
I’m writing it because it’s the answer to a question I’m often asked.
Doing so will create (hopefully) valuable content that will (hopefully) reach more people who are interested in this topic — and ultimately my newsletteras well..
2. Say Things Your Audience Wishes Somebody Would Say
Remember — you don’t write social media posts for yourself, you write them for your audience.
“So one of the best ways to get traction for your posts is to use them to express sentiments your audience wants to say, but either can’t or won’t say themselves.”
This requires empathy on your part. Put yourself in the mindset of your target audience and consider what makes them happy, sad, frustrated, inspired, or angry. What makes them feel something?
Think about what they WISH they could say on social media and put it in your own post.
If your instincts are right, they’ll love and share the post because it gives them the opportunity to say the thing they wished they could say.
Here’s an example from one of my clients:
The zakHill Group is a marketing agency that connects brands and entertainment properties to form innovative marketing partnerships.
This means one of their core target audiences on social media is marketing executives who are potential clients. The agency wants to show it understands and empathizes with those executives and the challenges of marketing a brand.
One way to do this is to create a Facebook post that says something most marketers believe and would want others to know about their challenges.
To do so, we created this Facebook post about things most people don’t understand about marketing executives:
The post is successful because it resonates with marketers who (like every professional) often feel misunderstood by non-marketers.
It expresses something the target audience wishes other people knew about them and in doing so demonstrates zakHill’s understanding of a marketer’s challenges and expands awareness of the agency’s work thanks to the sharing of the post.
3. Share Your Process
We all have our own little tricks. Unique ways of doing things we’ve developed over the years that we’ve found to help us accomplish things.
Those habits can be turned into valuable social media content.
It’s time to pay attention to how you attempt to get value out of situations your target audience also faces.
“Things that may seem minimal to you — how you manage your email, welcome new customers, or learn something new — are incredibly valuable to your audience.”
And they make for great social media posts.
Here’s an example from one of my clients:
Brian Medavoy is a Hollywood talent manager who calls on his decades of experience to help people navigate Hollywood through his social media channels.
One of the best ways to do this is to identify common situations people encounter in the entertainment industry and share his approach to them.
In a recent LinkedIn post (which can also be found on his Facebook page), he offered the following advice about networking at industry events:
The post resonates with his audience and is shared because it offers a simple, actionable, approach to improve the results people get from something they do often.
No matter what you do or who your audience is, if you identify situations they face, share your approach to those situations, and explain how it can benefit them, your post will provide value.
4. Share A Relevant Historical Story
Social media is a storytelling platform, but you’re not limited to your own stories.
The world (and the Internet) is filled with fascinating stories that are relevant to your audience — many of whom have never heard them before.
Researching these stories and presenting them in social posts is an easy way to create relevant, valuable posts for your followers.
Here’s an example from one of my clients:
Brian Naftaly is a real estate agent in Redondo Beach, California. He uses Facebook to build awareness and relationships with potential home buyers and sellers in the area — to position him as a helpful person they should know in the community.
One of the ways to do that is to create Facebook posts that are relevant to his target audience — stories about their local community that they find compelling and want to engage with or share.
Historical stories are a great way to do that.
In researching the area, we came across a story about a crazy community concert featuring the legendary punk band Black Flag (before they were legendary) and turned it into this Facebook post:
The post has been a huge hit with lots of locals sharing it and connecting with him as a result.
No matter what field you’re in, you can achieve similar results by sharing historical, nostalgic, and ideally slightly obscure stories related to things your target audience cares about.
It’s all out there — you’ve just got to Google it.
Want My Help With Your Social Posts?
When it comes to crafting social media posts that generate value for both you and your audience, these ideas are just the tip of the iceberg.
Email me if you’d like to know more about how I can help you.
One more thing…
Each week I share a collection of 10 ideas like this to help you learn, do, and become better at your work, art, and life.