Help your business stand out and build a better relationship with the audience
One of the main priorities of business owners is ensuring sales leads continue to grow. Social media is one of the most powerful tools small business owners have at their disposal. It helps businesses both to communicate both directly and indirectly as well as improve visibility.
At times, social media content creation isn't easy. In fact, it can be a hard, lengthy process. This is particularly true for those who do not think of themselves as creative. While it isn't always easy, creating unique content should always be a top priority.
Why Does Creating Unique Social Media Content Matter?
1. Unique Social Media Content Makes People Want to Engage
Family, friends, celebrities, business owners - everyone has something to say. Social media makes it easy for people to share opinions and businesses to share messages.
Yet, while everyone can share what they’d like, it doesn’t mean they are being heard. In fact, many social media posts are scrolled past each day. The truth is, if your content isn’t unique, it doesn’t get much attention and doesn’t have much value.
Creating unique content for social media matters because getting attention taking effort. You are not guaranteed tons of attention and sales just by being online. Instead, you need to convince people to pay attention to your content. Every day you are easily competing with content from millions of others. This is because you aren't just competing against industry competitors. People see ads, posts from friends/family, posts from pages they follow, and more. You need to create something that gets people to stop scrolling and look at your content.
But, getting people to stop and look at your social media content isn’t good enough. While this may lead to more interaction in the future, it doesn't have any immediate value. This is because you do not have any information to follow up. If people just view your content, you can't work to move them deeper into your sales funnel.
Your content needs to be interesting enough to get people to engage. On social media, there are three common ways people can engage with your content:
- They can “like” or leave a reaction. On Facebook and LinkedIn, people can be more expressive with several reaction options.
- Facebook reaction options include:
"Like" "Love" "Care" "Haha" "Wow" "Sad" "Angry"
- LinkedIn reaction options include:
"Like" "Celebrate" "Support" "Love" "Insightful" "Curious"
- They can leave a comment
- They can share on their own timeline or in a direct message to a friend or group
On Facebook, people can engage directly with social media content from businesses in another way. When creating a post, a button can be enabled that allows people to send you messages.
As you can see, all these forms of engagement provide your business with insight. The main advantage they provide is they let you know what content appeals to your audience most. This saves you time because you will know what content types and themes to use regularly. Furthermore, almost all forms of the above-mentioned engagement will provide you with names. As you have personal information, this aids the lead generation process. However, you will not receive any of this insight if your content doesn’t inspire people to take engage.
Perhaps the best kind of engagement is a comment. It is important to create unique social media content because you want to start a conversation. If people reach out by leaving a comment, it means they want to talk with you. This improves the likelihood of a sale as you know the person is already somewhat interested. No matter the conversation, it helps build a relationship with someone in your target audience. The more you build relationships, the more people will trust you and want to do business.
2. Unique Social Media Content Makes People Want to Learn More
Many businesses struggle to get online users to go beyond viewing or liking their posts. As stated above, people do not slowly review every post that comes across their newsfeed. The human attention span is short and there is simply not enough time in the day. Instead, people try and quickly determine what content seems relevant or entertaining.
While creating content doesn’t begin with direct outreach, it is similar to a sales call. With both methods, in a few seconds, you need to capture your target audience’s attention. If not, people will keep scrolling or they will hang up the phone.
Think of each piece of content as an introduction to your business. You need to mention unique things or relate to your audience on a personal level to get them to want to learn more. Also, every piece of content deserves as much or more care and creativity than the last. This is because you don’t know what content will be the introduction for someone to your small business. Compare your mindset to the one you have when making sales calls. You must be enthusiastic and informative at all times. Any lack of effort could mean the loss of a sale.
The process of online audiences learning more about you occurs quite naturally online. Consider what happens when you find a new video you like on YouTube. Once the video is over, you scroll below the video to see who created it. This is because the content captured your interest and was worthwhile. From there, you may decide to click on the creator’s name and go onto their channel. On their channel, you will likely try to see if they published any other similar content. Ultimately, you may subscribe because you want to be one of the first to know when they share something new.
The same argument can be made for content produced by businesses. If you consistently share unique educational or entertaining content, people will be curious. However, they might not just be curious if you produced more similar content. They might also decide to learn more about your business such as its location and all you offer. Customers may reach out directly because there was something that made you stand out. Whether you create something funny or heartfelt, you related on a personal level.
3. Unique Content Keeps People Interested
Creating unique content isn’t only important when you want to gain new customers. As business owners, it is not only critical to gain new customers but to keep past customers as well. Therefore, your content should not ignore this audience segment. This group can be your main focus when it is proving difficult to find new customers.
While they did not buy anything recently, new content can re-spark past customer interest in your business. Yet, this does not mean only to develop new direct promotional content. Instead, non-promotional content that interests new followers can appeal to current followers as well.
Many people use social media for direct promotion of their business. But, too much direct promotion can have negative consequences. Direct promotion doesn’t provide past customers with value at all times. Thus, it may bore or annoy them if you share this type of content often. The first way customers may respond when they are annoyed is by ignoring your posts. If you continue to focus only on direct promotion, your customers may decide to unfollow you. This can have a more serious impact on your business than it sounds at first.
It is important to note that our social media followers do not see all posts from us in their newsfeed. However, when they unfollow us, they will only see information from us when they seek it out. Therefore, they may miss special promotions when they would usually buy. Also, people might do more than just unfollow your business on social media if you annoy them. In fact, they may seek out a competitor as a replacement.
How Do You Create Unique Social Media Content?
While you understand now why unique content is important, creating it can still be hard. As there is much competition, it may be difficult to know if what you created is unique. Here are a few tips to spark a unique content development process:
1) Focus on unique assets
Luckily for small business owners, a lot of money isn't needed to create unique content. Instead, unique social media content just requires ideas and creative tools to execute.
There are plenty of things that make you like other people. Many entrepreneurs start their own business for similar reasons. Often you will hear many people did so to be in control of their own fate.
However, there are many things that make you unique. For example, everyone's path to entrepreneurship is different. One way to get started creating content is to focus on this concept as a business owner. It is in sharing your story that you can create unique content for your social media presence. Consider sharing information about the following:
- What motivated you to start your own business?
- Why did you start the business you did?
- Information you gained from your time acquiring knowledge about the field
By sharing the above information, it will help develop a better relationship with your customers. One reason why unique assets are powerful is because they “humanize” your business. When done correctly, people don’t only see you as a business owner trying to make money. Instead, people will also get a view of the people behind the business, as well as their goals and values.
Additionally, by sharing your knowledge, you establish yourself as an authority. It is likely that you learned something through the years your competitors didn’t. This makes you stand out because you offer unique value. Although you may offer the same services to your competitors, they do not share your story. At the end of the day, that is how you can diversify your business.
2) Experiment with the Content You Produce
It is common to look into what competitors are doing when first creating content. In some
cases, competitors may decide to post similar, but in their eyes, better content. For example, they might copy the idea to share interesting facts but post a graphic with them as well. While this is one way to put yourself above your competitors, it doesn’t show much individuality. If you want to stand out on social media, try something no competitor in your industry has tried before. Therefore, don’t just take note of what your competitors are doing, but what they’re not doing, too!
This is an important time to assess the content you produce on social media as well. Do you mainly post content only containing text? Ask yourself why. Is it because it’s easier or less time-consuming? Don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone. Look around at your competitors. What type of content do they produce? What content gets the most engagement? You might be surprised to learn that visual or
video posts receive a lot more attention!
You can both experiment and focus on unique assets to create social media content. For example, if you own a boutique, make a video showcasing a few new items that arrived for the season. While competitors can make similar videos, they do not sell the same items which means all of the videos would be unique.
Yet, this does not mean going against something that would sacrifice your branding. You would not want to focus on creating funny videos if you repair technology. This is because funny videos and technology repairs do not mix. Instead, you would want to create videos that prove your credibility.
3) Get Insight From Your Target Audience
One of the greatest assets that businesses have to help with content ideas is their audience. Do you tune into a podcast? If so, or if you watch videos on YouTube, sometimes there is an explanation on how to submit future content suggestions at the end. Ask your audience what they want to see and what captures their interest.
While this method for gathering ideas isn’t unique, the suggestions you’ll receive will be. You might also notice people leave questions in the comments of your videos. If people leave questions, answer the questions in a follow-up video. You can then reply to them and encourage them to check out your new video. This is an easy way to get inspiration for further content that you know will draw interest. If you get too many questions that you cannot address in one video, take note of them for future content ideas.
Insight can also be gathered from negative reviews or comments. You can create videos that explain business policies so people understand better. If a customer is having trouble, you can create a video explaining a solution to their problem. There are two benefits to this approach. First, it is an easy way to get inspiration for content. Secondly, it saves you time instead of dealing with several similar complaints. By addressing complaints in this way, you come across as transparent.
Unique social media content will help develop a stronger voice for your brand. A strong voice leads to greater recognition which will build leads faster and sales.
I am eager about helping small business owners. I am experienced in producing a variety of creative marketing materials for businesses and nonprofits in several fields across the United States.
I'm Sarah Strobel, Digital Marketing and Community Manager Intern, EMPro, Ltd
Contact me for Social Media Marketing and SEO copywriting.
LinkedIn: Sarah Strobel
EMPro, Ltd – Branding & Digital Marketing We Help Brands Grow Chicago, IL www.emproltd.com