Great, thumb-stopping social media content has 2 components: visuals and copy. Good images or video definitely increase engagement, and they endear your brand to customers. They can also keep customers from quickly swiping past your post and missing your message.
Here’s a few tips to stop those thumbs……
1. Use great visuals
Create great visuals for your posts! You don’t have to be a photographer – you can use stock photo websites like Pexels and Unsplash, which offer great images, many of them free. You can also use tools like Canva to help you create and brand simple, professional graphics.
Use more photos with faces in them – people-heavy images get more engagement, and they humanise your brand.
2. Make videos
With the advent of smartphone cameras, it’s never been easier to create video content. Facebook’s algorithm prioritises it, and it can be a fun way to show audiences what you offer. Plus, as live streaming has hit the mainstream, consumer expectation for social video has shifted. Videos that feel rougher around the edges can feel more native to social platforms. Give it a shot – again there are plenty of tools out there to make editing simple for example VidLab , iMovie, Magisto, Overvideo.
3. Run competitions & polls
Run contests to ramp up your social media strategy. Crafting a successful social media contest is one of the most alluring tactics you can use. It’ll increase your online visibility, your followers, and your engagement. The key to executing a successful contest is offering something of value, something that’ll be irresistible to your audience.
4. Stay inspired
It’s good practise to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. What are they doing well, what not so well, what can you do better? Also, keep a list of brands or organisations whose social media content you love, and check in with them from time to time for inspiration!
5. Call to actions (CTA)
Don’t make customers guess if they want to continue the journey with your brand, tell them they do. (And make it clear where their click will send them.)
6. Use of emojis capital letters
Ordinarily, all-caps words are a no-no and can be seen as annoying and unprofessional. However, we can make an exception here, because one of the better ways to stop thumbs is to shout. So a quick “HELP!” or “WOW” can be appropriate for these must-see posts.
Emojis are widely used across social media now, and are also another way to draw attention to and amplify your message. Remember less is more though!
7. Tell stories
People love stories, and it’s one of the best ways to create content that will engage your audience and keep them interested. Storytelling is about connecting with your followers, friends and circles on an emotional level. And when you do, you’ll have a deeper and more meaningful social media conversation with them.
8. Focus on trends, topical content
Keep an eye on daily trending topics – what are people talking about? Brexit, the cold weather, summer holidays, new year's resolutions, lambing season, silage making? Use these trends to help inform your content and to help you write engaging headlines and posts.
9. Use a mix of content
People have a natural inclination to diversity and this applies to the type of content they like to consume. You can explore and trial the use of photos, video, info graphics, memes, boomerangs, polls, UGC (user generated content), inspiring quotes, live streaming (e.g. interviews), webinars, testimonials, e-books & guides. What does your audience like? Are there certain days that particular types of content work well (e.g. Thoughtful Thursday, Top Tips Tuesday).
11. Curate topical content (and comment on it)
Content curation is defined as ‘the process of finding, organising and sharing online content.’ Think about great sources of relevant content to share with your audience. You can also set up Google Alerts to track specific keywords – have a think about what these keywords might be.
Think about what % of your content will be curated. Here’s an example: Post curated content 50%, original content 30% and promotional material 20% of the time.
10. Keep selling to a minimum
Your audience are not on social media to be sold to, so as suggested above this promotional content should make up only around 20% of your overall content plan.
11. Think about your audience and platform
Respect the psychology of what people are doing when they’re on the platform. Depending on the social network you’re posting on, you’ll need to learn the various purposes of each network.
Respect your audience – it’s not about ‘broadcasting’ all the messages you want to communicate to people (that is secondary) – think about what your audience wants to hear, how can you help solve their problems, entertain or education them?
12. Support your content with facts and links
It’s vital you content is well researched and backed by sound facts and credible links from sources such as credible news agencies, industry influencers, market leaders, and other respected voices in your industry. This will increase credibility and engagement capacity; you may also build relationships and rapport from these sources.
13. Be ‘sociable’
Remember its ‘social’ media – be aware of your brand guidelines and tone of voice, but be conversational and remember social media is the human voice of your brand.
14. Listen & learn what works
There is no universal rule to what you can and can’t do when it comes to social media. Keep testing different content, and different settings, and adjust according to the results you get.