“If you’re not putting out relevant content in relevant places, you don’t exist.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
Our social media pages are just as important, if not more important, as our website. People are looking to Instagram, Facebook or Twitter to figure out who your company is and what your company is about.
The goldfish conundrum is related to the attention span of people who live in the modern world. Most people are looking at multiple screens at one time: their TV, computer, and cell phone. As a result, people no longer read complete articles or even watch complete videos.
5 Step Plan to Better Content
Define Both Your Content Goal and Business Goal
Your business goal should be supported by your content goal; it must be clearly defined. You should check to see if each piece of content is supporting your established goal before it is published.
Create for a Specific Resident Persona
The resident persona is essentially your ideal resident. This is created based on the demographics and psychographics of the type of person you would want to have as a resident in your community. To develop the persona, you should get to know your ideal residents’ likes and dislikes. You can interview a couple of your current ideal residents to collect some of this information.
Conduct a Content Audit
Perform an audit to determine what your residents like and what they do not like so you can focus on creating more of what they like. In addition, complete a review of your competitors to see what they are doing well. This will allow you to take pieces of that and work it into your own content strategy.
Determine the Right Planning and Management Tools
Tools are essential to your content strategy. You must have a plan on what type of content works best and then try to stay consistent. Pay attention to things like the best time to post and when you are getting the most responses to your content.
Focus on Brainstorming and Making Necessary Adjustments
Always speak with members of your team, especially the ones who interact with your residents often. This will make it easier for your marketing department to make content that is relevant and useful.
Quality vs Quantity
Gone are the days of making a high number of daily blog or other social media posts. Today, quality is more important than ever when it comes to your content.
Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms have changed so much over the years. Facebook’s primary goal is return users. They like to see more content as well as quality. The number of posts and comments are not as important as the quality and consistency of your posts.
Define success and create milestones such as increased retention, improved resident happiness, etc. Below are tools to help you reach your milestones:
Competitor Analysis
Always review what your competitors are doing. Your job is to find areas where you can do better.
Ask the Audience
Ask your residents what they want more of or could do without when it comes to content.
Visual Content
According to a study by MIT, the brain can process a visual in 13 milliseconds. Imagery creates more recall than text alone. This can be e-books, memes, or infographics, using the same font for a key word.
Create a brand style guide for your community. This will include your colors, fonts, imagery, and voice style. The brand style creates your community’s personality.
Create a strong identity brand. Imagery is extremely important and it should match your brand. Take some time to determine what appeals to your demographic.
Algorithm Tips
Following and paying attention to these four factors will determine how often your amazing content will be seen by your ideal residents and prospects.
- Who Posted It – This plays a huge role in who sees your content.
- How People Engage (post impressions) – This increases the relevancy and the number of people who see your content.
- Identify the Type of Post – This plays a large role in how they interact, whether it be a video, image, or simply text or links.
- When It Was Posted – The time of day and week is key. Check your Facebook insights to see the best time to post for your ideal residents and prospect’s engagement.
Overall, your goal is to understand who your exact ideal resident is and speak to them. You have many avenues to share the content once it is created. Focus on making visual content a key part of your content marketing strategy.
Presented by:
Misty Sanford, Founder
North of Creative