We often see the mistake of businesses posting mostly about their products, sales, and new arrivals. I want you to pause and consider the kind of content that you watch and enjoy on social media… What kind of videos are you watching until the end? What sorts of carousels are you swiping all the way through? They likely are filled with posts that are:
- Entertaining
- Educational
- Inspiring
There’s a fine balance between a community and a customer group on social media. Community takes connection, maintenance, and care, and naturally, your audience are much better customers if they are being nurtured versus just sold to. People like buying from people, so I’d like to remind you to keep your social channels full of engaging content that has a human focus.
We recommend creating this content by applying two main strategies that are like cheat sheets to help you come up with social media content. The first one is to follow the 80/20 Rule. We talk about this rule to our Insider members often, and essentially, it suggests that around 80% of your content should have a focus of building a relationship and nurturing your audience, and only 20% of your content is focused on selling to them.
The second strategy is to build and use content pillars for your social channels. Content pillars are a handful of categories you will consistently post about that relate to your business, your audience, your brand, your location and your products. They will help your brand stay consistent on your social channels and better reflect what is happening in store.
When you’re about to post on social media, but you can’t think of what to post about, you can always lean back on your content pillars to have a category to choose from.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when building content pillars:
- Choose 5-7 Pillars to rotate through on social.
- Keep your community and what they want to see in mind when choosing your content pillars.
- Are your content pillars trendy or do they lean into the essence of your brand?
- Are your content pillars unique to you and your business?
- Do you have content pillars outside of your products and service offerings?
You want to try to have a good variety of pillars that can help your audience feel closer to you, to appeal to your viewers, and to talk about your product. Crystal Media works exclusively with independent retailers, helping them to grow through digital marketing and social media. Keeping this in mind, our pillars are: Team, Expert Tips, Social Media Content Ideas, Our Retailers, Community/Encouragement/Support, and then Our Services.
A Toy Store may have these as Content Pillars:
1. Behind-The-Scenes – Small Business Owner + Team: Introducing team, drinks/snacks, childhood pics, recommendations, fun facts, opinions, pets, day in the life, updates, opinions.
2. Gifts: Gift Guides + Albums. (Highlights, Carousels, FB Albums + regular posts feeding into these)
3. Playtime: Customers, how-to, educational, tips, FAQs.
4. Shop Local: In-store images, other local businesses.
5. Toys/Products: Display images, storefront images, new arrivals, unboxing, product carousels.
6. City/Town: Images from around town, sunsets, things to do, weather updates + products to go along with weather conditions.
If you’re stuck on what to choose, you can always include your team, your location (city/town), and a special interest you have such as travel, dogs, cooking, chocolate, etc. Then, you can post about that interest in the form of memes, products, or funny stories from you and your team.
Lastly, you can take a look at your website header, and see what categories you generally have for your products to include a couple product categories for your content pillars. Be sure to also follow the 80/20 rule when posting within your pillars – you can still make product (selling) posts entertaining and educational for your audience!
What I Want You To Take Away From This Blog:
- Choose 5-7 Pillars for your business to post about.
- Consider a mix of product, team, location and personality when choosing your pillars.
- Pillars can help create brand consistency.
- Stick to your content pillars and combine them with the 80/20 rule.
Okay, over to you…
Do you already have content pillars, or do you know which content pillars you will use for you business? Comment below!
Comment via Facebook