Is Your Social Media Content Boring? Here’s the Only Way to Fix It for Good

Social media marketing. Three words that every marketer utters when backed into a corner for answers and results. But here’s the hard truth about social media marketing. Not all marketers see an ROI. In fact, even though 77% marketers claim to be using social media for marketing, only 48% of them seem to have any ROI whatsoever. Why? Not all marketers invest enough to create fresh and effective content.

Is your content boring and overdone? Let’s think realistically. It’s hard to put out fresh, intellectually stimulating, humorous and compelling content every single day. Or is it? Maybe you haven’t discovered a creative process that allows you to perform that way yet.

1. Tickle your tastebuds with flavors that make you want to sing

“Successful creators don’t just like knowledge, they thirst for it,” says Keith Sawyer, author of “Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity”. Serial entrepreneur and tech revolutionary Elon Musk and IT veteran Bill Gates have both confessed to being avid readers. To be a successful creator, you have to develop a desire to consume a lot of content yourself. But what content should you ideally consume?

Every exceptional artist has a muse, just as every talented content creator has go-to sources for inspiration. What are yours? Here are a few ways to find inspiration.

• Inspiration can come from anywhere – books, movies or even conversations with interesting people. Any piece of information that’s new can break you out of old thinking patterns that are holding you back. Ensure that you have time for good books, movies and conversations every week.
• Long walks, rides or meditation can do a lot for your creative imagination. Sometimes, your mind is full of ideas, but you are not in the right mind space to access them. During such times, you could indulge in meditative or refreshing activities to clear your mind and let ideas flow.
• Today, there are tons of apps and platforms serving content. But not all content is good content. Instead of letting these apps take over your life, why not control your content consumption and make it actually beneficial?
• Additionally, you could also use a content curation app like DrumUp to curate fresh content for daily inspiration.

The idea is to build daily habits that enable your creative imagination, helping you generate ideas easily so you can keep your social media content fresh. If you’re still stuck, you could try one of the following:

• Watch TEDTalks. They usually have new ideas and great language – two great precursors for fresh content ideas.
• Begin curating an inspiration file with pieces of ideas, writing, design or stories that intrigue you. They’ll come to your rescue during tough times.
• Watch interviews of your favorite personalities. You might find their lives and experiences inspiring.
• Listen to new music. If you are visually receptive, new sounds may prompt the flow of new ideas.
• Try remote association exercises. For instance, you can take the first line of one song and try to connect it to the last line of another song by writing the lines in between. You could also consider three completely random ideas and spin them into a story. Such activities generally get your creative juices flowing.
• Make a collage or build a lego house. You could also do something simpler if you lack resources. Arrange your desk or doodle random ideas in your head.

2. Diversify your social media content with videos, infographics, quotes, GIFs, memes and storytelling

Facebook mobile users spend no more than 1.7 seconds on each piece of content. That’s the time you have to grab their attention. Doing that by sharing the same kind of social media content repeatedly is impossible because people who lose interest easily will switch to another page. However, you can keep audience attention by diversifying your social media content.

It’s the purple cow principle. Remember Seth Godin’s infamous TED Talk “How to get your ideas to spread”? People won’t stop for a cow, but show them a purple cow or a cow with golden locks and…

• It’s hard to keep surprising your social media audience when you have to post content everyday. But you can easily “keep it fresh” by using different content formats such as videos, infographics, GIFs, memes and quotes.

Each of these content formats can be easily designed even if you don’t have designing experience. There are tons of Saas (Software As a Service) tools that offer ready templates which you can design these types of content. 

For instance, Venngage has several infographic templates that you can work with and Giphy makes GIF making easy.

• Use storytelling on every social media post. People are drawn to stories because they evoke strong emotions rooted in their earliest years of life. How do you use storytelling? Create characters, narrate scenes and take people through the experience that you want them to have.
• Work with all the special features on different social media platform. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat Stories, Instagram Boomerang and Twitter Moments are all creative opportunities to change the way social media users perceive your brand. Not only do “Stories” appear prominently on top of social feeds, but they also disappear 24 hrs after publishing, giving you the freedom to share more freely.
• Save your posts and ideas in online content libraries such as the ones on DrumUp, so you can work with them just before publishing. You could also save great posts to inspire future posts or inspire the start of a series.

If you still don’t have enough to embellish your page with vibrant and original social media content, here are a few things that you can consider.

• Curate content from other brands, personalities who are in your space but don’t compete with you. DrumUp’s keyword based content curation will help you find articles written by journalists, whom you can also @mention when sharing posts through the tool.
• Share simple questions, quizzes or contests that can engage your social media audience.

 3. Invest in empathy; understand customer intent and feelings

Every social media marketer reads hundreds of blog and social media posts for social media marketing inspiration. However, few of them can actually drive results for brands using social if marketers lose sight of the most important part of having a social media presence – being human. Companies who anchor their social media marketing strategy around this fact are more likely to have larger and more loyal social media followings and better sales.

The beauty of social media is that it allows for two way communication, wherein current and prospective customers can respond to brands and share opinions. Use that fact to build real connections with your social media fans.

• The first mistake that many brands make on social media is that they overdo professionalism and end up being boring. People don’t want more “corporate talk”. They want to know who you are. So, be as genuine and authentic as you can on social media. Give your brand a personality that people can relate to.
• One of the biggest mistakes that brands make on social media is focusing too much on their brand, products and services. In marketing expert Guy Alvarez’s words, “Social Media is Not a Bullhorn”, and you should stop writing about why your products are amazing. People today can’t be bothered by what you have to sell. They’re interested in how you can change their lives. Show them that by sharing more customer-oriented content.
• Make people smile. Want to stay on top of customers’ minds? Tell them something that will make them smile. Create content that will come back to them when they’re driving or shopping or being bored on the internet.
• Give more than you get. Think about this. Would you rather spend time with a friend who’s there for you or someone who’s always asking you for money? Limit your social media sales pitches. Instead, try and befriend your social media audience.

The easiest way to build a rapport with your audience is by understanding how they feel. Here are a few ways to do that.

• Look carefully at support queries. What emotions have customers expressed towards your products and services? That can tell you a lot about how to approach them. For instance, if customers have displayed signs of uncertainty and anxiousness, you should invest in understanding what their concerns about your products are.
• Talk to customers face to face or on the phone when you can and ask for feedback related to your products and content. Pay attention to their tone of voice and emotions instead of focusing only on what they say.

 4. Work hard on that sense of humor, every single day

Being humorous is a great way to catch the attention of your social media audience. By appealing to them emotionally, you stand a better chance than others at generating curiosity about who you are and what you sell. It also stands that humor is great for brand awareness and brand recall, two things that can help you stay etched in your target audience’s memory longer.

However, writing jokes is hard. The activity requires a rare combination of creative intelligence and an understanding of customer psychology. Here’s a list of tips that can help.

• According to Dr. Peter McGraw and Dr. Caleb Warren, researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder, humor occurs when two events coincide –

i) Someone threatens a person’s worldview (his or her) sense of how the world should be, and ii) The threat is amiable but potent. Try and satisfy these criteria with the jokes that you write for social media.

• Practise writing humor everyday, because only 10% of what you write maybe usable material. Just as any other skill, writing humor takes practise and you’ll get better at it over time.
• Follow a bunch of comedians and novelists you consider raconteurs, so you can breakdown their work and study their style of writing. When breaking down their writing, try and pay attention to the details – the words they use, the tone they use, the visuals that they try to paint with words. Some good examples of novelists to study are PG Wodehouse and Caitlin Moran.
• Curate humorous content for your social media fans. There are tons of great social media pages already posting funny content. You could simply repost some of that content (with tags and proper credit) for your audience’s benefit. The admins of the pages you help promote will definitely thank you for it.

If you’re still unable to find enough inspiration to add humor to your social media content, you could try one of the following.

• Wit is underrated. Use witty quips (crediting them to the author) or create your own. Try and give new endings to old sayings or come-up with new “terms” that have funny definitions.
• Poke fun at your brand. That’s a great way to endear your social media fans. Ellen DeGeneres tells a lot of jokes targeted at herself (click here for link to video below).

5. Strike the pinata at its heart by vanquishing customers’ pet peeves

When people don’t convert, it’s usually because they have a very specific issue stopping them from doing so. When customers leave, they usually have very specific problems that haven’t be addressed. Strategic content can bridge these gaps and boost both your conversion rates and customer retention rates. That’s why you should focus on creating social media content that relates to customer and prospect issues.

Here’s what you need to know when creating content to solve issues that customers and prospects face.

• Before you begin solving issues, it’s important to know if they actually exist and what they are. Many social media managers make the mistake of assuming likes, dislikes and concerns of target groups, leading to the incorrect investment of time and money on creating content that’s not really relevant.
• Once you’re sure of what concerns customers and prospects have, it’s time to understand exactly how to address them. The content format and script that you use matter to a great extent. You conversion and retention depend on how well you address issues using content.
• Use simple resolutions in content that your target groups can follow easily. Avoid using terms that can confuse people and don’t unnecessarily complicate your content.
• Invest in content formats that you know your target groups consume. For instance, if your target groups include people who read a lot, you can focus on blog posts. Else, it’s important to complement blog posts with videos, infographics, GIFs and memes. The videos you create should ideally be short and easy to consume – 60s or less if you plan to share them on social media platforms.
• You could use success stories, case-studies and testimonials to illustrate to your target groups how you can solve important issues. In fact, doing so will add social proof and credibility to the equation and make your brand appear more trustworthy.

Here are a few extra tips to ensure that you aim right and successfully eliminate the issues that your target groups have using social media content.

• Google keyword planner (and other keyword research tools) are excellent ways to understand customer intent. If you create blog posts using data drawn from such tools, you can attract attention on social media and drive SEO traffic to your website.
• You can also use a tool such as FAQFox to search for queries on forums such as Quora, so you can identify important questions that your audience is asking.

Wrap

Social media marketing is an important part of every marketer’s $0 marketing plan, but few of these marketers ever see the results that they desire. Why? They’re using the wrong content or targeting the wrong channels. This post suggests the only way you can take boring social media content and turn it interesting.

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Facebook Are Trying to Hook People Into Stories With a Camera Upgrade

 While Facebook are enjoying continued success with their Stories feature on Instagram and lukewarm success with the Messenger version, the main platform equivalent continues to suffer. Despite the fact that they're winning the battle on two fronts, Facebook are continuing to try and salvage the languishing third version, rather than simply letting it die out as they often do with features which the public don't latch onto.

Their latest attempt to win people around to the idea is a slew of new updates for the in-app camera. These include the ability to create those colourful text posts using the camera, live stream video straight from the camera screen and, most significantly, create GIFs. It works much like Boomerang, enabling you to record a two-second GIF from the camera screen and post it either as a Story, in your news feed or send it as a message to someone else.

These new features are all useful, and certainly have applications above and beyond Story, but that's what Facebook are trying to steer people towards. I'm making a bold prediction here - it won't work.

The issue with Stories isn't that it isn't versatile enough, it's that there are three more popular versions of it on three other applications which all suit it better than the standard Facebook app does.

Facebook's feed is in danger of becoming a cluttered mess, when all anyone actually does is scroll through the news feed, look at other profiles and occasionally check their On This Day tab. GIFs or no GIFs, Stories is a needless appendage.

More to the point, Instagram is already equipped with all the features that Facebook are now adding in, rendering the entire update almost completely pointless. Facebook are in danger of overcommitting with their app synergy, up to the point where there will be little to nothing unique about each individual service beyond its primary function. Migrating features over from Instagram is redundant because those features fit that structure, but don't fit Facebook's.

Sure, Instagram has enjoyed success off the back of these changes, and there is a market for Facebook users who aren't on Instagram, but the thing to bear in mind is that if users don't have Instagram, it's probably because they don't want it. Facebook are in a position now where virtually no decision they make will jeopardise their position at the top of the social media tree, but it would still be nice to see them flexing their imagination a bit more, rather than just rehashing features from other platforms, especially features originally stolen from Snapchat.

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7 Types of Social Media Content That Drive Most Engagement – What Experts Say (& Real Life Examples)

A Facebook page with 1 million fans can expect only about 20,000 of them to view a particular post- an observation made by Erik Devaney in one of his Hub Spot posts. If fan views are 2% or lower, engagement, and therefore leads are bound to be even lower. At this rate acquiring customers via social can become an excruciatingly tiresome process. Organically there are limited ways of improving your visibility, but engagement is something you can explore and optimize to the make most of the views you are getting. Great social media content is a challenge to create, but content is the key to creating engagement, and that’s where you should begin.

But then, does engagement really work?

You bet it does! As discovered by TrustRadius, 80% marketers identify engagement as one of the top three metrics for evaluating social media marketing success. Also, a study conducted by Demand Metric revealed that 70% of marketers believe that interactive content effectively engages buyers. If you are investing in social, you have to invest in creating engaging content.

What are the 7 types of content that drive most engagement?

The common imperative for all engaging content is the ability to catch and hold viewers’ attention. How you do that is up to you, but to make it simpler we have for you the 7 major kinds of content that keep audiences engrossed.

1. Content written for Me by You

Write for your readers. Write your posts in the most human way possible. Ideally, your words should pull readers into the post, and you can do that only by directly addressing them and the questions they are likely to have through your writing. Preferably write in first person, avoid jazz, and don’t put effort into sounding more complicated and distant.

Write as you.
Don’t be afraid to add a dash of your personality into your content. Be authentic. In fact, it is vital for your audience to be able to discern you from the noise and personality is the way to do it.
A good example of interactive writing is this blog written by social media marketing expert Kerry Butters. The first line you read draws you into a story, and she speaks directly to you in a warm tone.

This is precisely what you want to accomplish with your writing.

Quick Tips:

1. Directly address your audience and their questions
2. Keep your tone of writing warm
3. Be authentic

2. Content that inspires emotion

Jeremy Ellens says it well with “Effective Marketing Appeals to Emotions Instead of Reason”. If someone gave you $1000 and a month to market a product, you’d be well of spending at least 50% of both on creating the experience you’d want to sell. Experience is best recreated with emotion, and this is a powerful way of connecting with your audience. Apple has done this exceedingly well in this space.

To do justice to deep value content and the engagement it drives, I’ve extensively discussed four sub-types of this kind of content. There are endless ways in which you can bond with your audience on an emotional level. These are a few popular methods used.

a. Tickle them with humour

Humor is likely to enhance brand recall and influence buying decisions when well integrated with your marketing message. Also, everyone needs more laughter in their lives. Bring that, and you instantly create a connect with your viewers, and then you can give them your message.

Unfortunately, although we all believe that we’re hilarious, not all of us can make high-impact humour. To pull this off you’ll have to hire the right comic talent and be well informed on the preferences of your Target Audience.
Lou Dubois breaks down marketing humour well in his Inc. piece.  With examples of what works and doesn’t work, he also adds that you could take inspiration from local theatres or approach film schools for help when experimenting with humour. You could also try a potential idea on a small group of people belonging to your Target Audience and assess their reactions.

b. Put on a show for them

“Don’t sell, entertain,” quips Jessie Gould, and I couldn’t agree more. 77% of Americans are stressed out, and 39% of them claim to have no time for leisure. Gould points out that people’s feelings manifest in the way they engage with the market. Consumers seek out entertainment and you should be the one to give it to them. In fact, with a large number of brands vying for their attention, memorable entertainment is one great way of getting ahead of your competition.

Can you recall a jingle that got stuck in your head for weeks? I’m sure you can name ten. Here’s one of my favourite jingles:

Always remember, the cardinal rule of marketing is to give your audience what they want and need. Give them that incentive to engage with you. Again, don’t forget to invest in understanding what your audience will enjoy and relate to. Without that, your returns may not match your efforts.

c. Share inspirational content

Inspiration is almost contagious if you’ve noticed the pull that most of us have towards inspirational content, especially in image-quote and concept-video formats. Inspiration shared as stories, of success and of failure also do very well on social media. Tyrese Gibson, who plays Roman Pearce in The Fast and Furious Franchisee does a lot of inspirational based sharing on his social media accounts. Most of these shares receive a lot of attention and interaction.

While inspiration is effective in encouraging engagement, how you implement it for marketing is important. What and how you share matters. Andrew Hutchinson explains this with his three tips for utilizing quote posts to best effect: –

1. Use your own images where possible
2. Seek out the best quotes which support your brand mission
3. Don’t go overboard

d. Meet them on an intellectual level

The goal here is to share witty, clever and intelligent content to appeal to that aspect of your audience’s personalities. Everyone appreciates a think-ride. That’s where you see something and get to thinking and then arrive at a conclusion that surprises you or shows you something new. This trip is alluring, satisfying and pleasurable. But the challenge is actually creating content that can do this well. You can’t afford to overshoot and go above your audience’s heads or simply fail at communicating the effect that you desire. If making this kind of content seems hard, and it is, could always share stuff like this to get a high response.

Here’s a really cool example of intellectually appealing content:

That concludes the content with emotional value section. Just to recap, you could make your audience laugh, captivate them with gripping content, inspire them or enthral them with intelligent content. While doing any of the above don’t forget to follow these tips.

Quick Tips:
1. Research you Target Audience’s preferences
2. Hire the right talent
3. Do a test pilot
4. Share, if not create

3. Content in story form

It was late last Wednesday when everyone had left the office. I was bent over my tortoise of a laptop and furiously clicking away at a mouse to get google to respond to my query, “Storytelling + Inspiration”. I was ready to vanquish the pop-up and get to the article behind, but what came up was something very interesting.

I’d say there are definitely higher chances of someone responding to a message like that one, what do you think?

Now that you’ve got two examples of storytelling (my own petty attempt to start this para with a story, and the writing on the pop-up), maybe you’re convinced to try it out. If you aren’t, John Solomon has three great reasons for you to get storytelling:

1. Narrative lends a personalized bent to your brand.
2. Stories can spruce up even the most boring case studies and data sets.
3. Tales of real-life customers can lend social proof to your advertising messages.

To help you make the best of your storytelling/marketing moves, James T Noble has four narrative elements that make for strong business stories.

Four Story Elements:

1. What makes you special? – build your story around this
2. Be creative – don’t do clichés
3. Get people involved – your audience could be characters, or you could get them to tell their stories
4. Think like a book – all your campaigns should fit into the same book or theme

4. Content that is open-ended

“Open conversations generate loyalty, sales and most of all, learning… for both sides,” states marketing pro-Seth Godin. Ask your audience what they want, listen carefully and they’ll tell you. This is invaluable when developing your business, but can also be applied to gaining marketing insights. Observe how your audience reacts to various types of content and they’ll essentially tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing.

Open-ended also means freedom for you and your audience both.

Until now we’ve discussed different essences that you can infuse into your marketing for better audience engagement. Now comes the really fun part. Q n As, surveys, you could do an #AskMeAnything, or any fun contest no holds barred. This is where you get to be really creative. The idea is that when you leave a question mark hanging, give someone options or get them to play a game, it instantly awakens in people an urge to respond. Adding incentives is another way of encouraging more engagement. Jay Baer from Convince and Concert has thirteen ingredients for the perfect social media contest.

Domino’s UK did a campaign that ran between 9 am and 11 am on March 5, 2012. The promo cut the price of the pizza giant’s Pepperoni Passion Pizza each time someone tweeted the hashtag #letsdolunch. The brand received an overwhelming response of over 85,000 tweets in two hours and ending up selling the pizza at 7 pounds lesser than its original price, but the sales they made that day would have definitely covered multiple times that margin. Making games a group activity is a great way of increasing engagement.

Quick Tips:

1. Ask you audience what they want
2. Listen in to market buzz
3. Experiment with quizzes, voting, ask and answer questions, create discussions and fun contest with incentives.
4. Share contest results, request winners to do the same
5. Get creative – try online versions of offline games

5. Real- time content

67% of buyers responded best to content that contained timely or unique information, according to an Economist Group survey. The way we communicate is constantly changing with social, and audiences are always active. The discerning element rests in how you communicate with your audience real-time.

To leverage real-time opportunities on social, you’ve got to think on your feet and be smart about it. This skill is something developed over time, with experience. What helps is knowing what not to do and Jen Gray explains this in “Real-Time Engagement Etiquette – Avoid Social-Media Mishaps”.

Gray says, to ensure meaningful exchanges and avoid blunders, there are four questions you should ask yourself ask each time you post something on social media.

Real-time Posting Quick Checks:

1. What’s the ultimate goal?
2. Do you have something to say?
3. Is the message authentic to the brand’s voice?
4. Does the post add value to a consumer relationship?

Here’s an instance of good real-time engagement- Miramax, the film company, honoured veterans on Veteran’s day by tweeting out a blog post highlighting bravery of Civil War and World War II soldiers.

6. Informational content

Millions of people turn to social media for information, a good part of them possibly your target audience and potential customers. “The point isn’t just to be present,” says Tim Williams, founder of Ignition Consulting Group, “ but to be useful.” You could approach informational content in one of many ways, blogs – guides, trends, popular misconceptions, insights or you could go visual with infographics, videos (vlogs), or even do a podcast. The exciting idea is how you can help your audience in so many ways, using different platforms and information formats.
One blogger that does this really well is Gary Vaynerchuk.

Quick tips:

1. Play with formats – keep them fresh and fun
2. Imagine the questions your audiences might ask, and answer them
3. Write compelling headlines
If you have seconds to catch someone’s attention, you really have to be good at it! Here’s a guide to writing great headlines by Jon Morrow.

7. Visual content

By now everyone knows that visual content amplifies content and its chances of getting noticed. Jesse Mawhinney’s blog comprehensively describes the power of image communication and marketing.

There are so many ways in which you can use visuals. Certain colors even hold the ability to impact your sales, as Brian Morris explains in “10 Colors That Increase Sales, and Why”.

Quick Tips:

1. You could experiment with collages, comics, infographics, posters, graffiti, gifs and videos.
2. Be sure to A/B test everything that you try, and assess which ones your audience likes best.

Here are a few examples of attention-catching visuals as graphs, collages, gifs and other inventive formats.

Types of visual content that you should use 

a. Infographics 

Infographics get shared 3X as many times as any other type of content on social networks (Source: HubSpot’s Visual Marketing Statistics). You can use that to your advantage.

Create infographics out of important topics in your niche and ensure that you brand them. Place your company logo and a link back to a supporting article on your blog in every social share. The tactic would probably work best if you had a unique, eye-catching style of creating infographics that your audience grew to recognize and enjoy.

There are many choices in graphic design software that you can use to create infographics without much of a hassle.

b. Graphs 

If you quote studies often, on your blog posts, social shares, newsletters and case-studies, you could turn them into graphs instead.

Graphs are better than written data for three reasons – people grasp concepts, ideas and messages more deeply when they are communicated visually, visually represented messages are retained in the memory longer and content with visuals are generally shared more.

c. Screenshots 

Screenshots allow you to illustrate what you otherwise can’t – examples in posts, ideas that your readers can use or insights that might otherwise be missed.

There aren’t any rules for screenshots. You can use them just about anywhere, even in your social media posts.

d. GIFs 

GIFs can act as quick additions to capture the attention of people on social networks. They can be great and refreshing, or even comical when used in the right context.

DrumUp lets you search and add GIFs from GIPHY when scheduling your posts on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Here are a few examples of brands using GIFs for social media marketing that you can refer to for inspiration.

8. Live-streaming

In 2017, many brands are moving past visual content to . Using live-streaming tools like Facebook Live, Periscope and Webinar hosts, brands are attempting to break the 2D content barrier and catch viewer attention.

The great news? Most live-streaming tools are free (Facebook Live and Periscope). You simply need a live-streaming strategy to get on board.

Begin by listing the easiest things that you can do using live video – interviews? news casts?

Once you have done that, reach out to and enlist the right partners (expert content creators, bloggers and influencers) who can help you create that content.

That wraps up the seven types of engagement driving content. It’s over to you now. I’d love to see what each of you does with this. Share it with me and I’ll include your ideas on our next blog.

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