And How to Achieve the Perfect Balance of Posts and Type of Content
What makes the digital world so amazing is the ability for brands to get their content in front of as many eyeballs as possible.
Because of this, many marketers obsess over hitting the algorithm just right and their strategies focus on delivering content, rather than on the quality of that content.
This overemphasis on quantity may get you more followers and likes faster, but it’s not what truly drives meaningful engagement.
In order to truly be successful in your marketing efforts, you need to focus on quality.
What is Quality Content?
High quality content is rich content. This is the type of content that provides value to your target audience by giving them much needed information or solving a problem they have. This could be a product demo, a tutorial that shows how to use your product, or a new product Q&A. This type of content is extremely sharable because it is centered around information. Sharing not only boosts your visibility, but it boosts the engagement on your post and account!
But quality content doesn’t have to be about products or services. Quality content also creates conversations and community. Remember, content-rich marketing isn’t about constantly selling products or services. It’s about engaging your audience with thought-provoking content. Pose a question or make your followers laugh to subtly engage them on a deeper level. Or you can share a thought leadership article or a behind-the-scenes look at your brand.
Finding the Right Balance
When you focus on quality over quantity, it’s all about finding the right balance for how often you post. Each platform is a little bit different, for example, you probably want to post on Twitter more often than you would Facebook. But no matter how many times you post, follow the 80/20 rule.
The 80/20 rule means that 80% of your posts should be rich content while 20% should be promotional and advertising content. Be sure to subtly share your promotional content by posting it in intervals, so it’s sprinkled amongst your rich content. This will help your content seem less overtly salesy so that your audience is more open to the promotional posts.
Focus Your Efforts
If you think that sharing quality content means spending most of your time attached to your computer, you’d be wrong. Your audience comes to you for a specific reason so focus your efforts. Once you find out what makes your audience tick and what they expect from you, you can easily optimize your posts to get more mileage out of them. And often, content-rich marketing materials have an evergreen quality to them. This means that you can reshare old content that is still relevant.
Here’s how you can optimize your content to focus on quality:
- Analyze your insights and identify the most engaging content
- Develop content around the needs and challenges your audience has based on your insights
- Create core or pillar content and then break it down into portions, or chunks, of meaningful posts
- Reshare evergreen content that is relevant in the moment
Don’t Forget to Focus on the User Experience
The design and function of your posts and platform is more than just creating an appealing aesthetic. The core aspect of an excellent user experience is to create a functional and cohesive interface. Good design can make or break customer engagement and satisfaction. You should have a seamless experience from social post to website or blog. Branding should be the same across all channels and your site or blog should be easy to navigate. Test your website and see where people are jumping off, then make tweaks to the content and how it’s displayed to improve user experience and engagement.
Final Thoughts
People log on to social media to be entertained and to seek connection. Your target audience wants inspiration or information on topics that matter to them; they don’t want to constantly be sold to. Bombarding your target audience with ads is a surefire way to turn them off and you’ll see your engagement numbers drop. Content-rich marketing on the other hand, gets users excited and engaged. It builds community and once you have a strong community, sales will follow naturally.