What You Need To Know If You Are New To Social Media
It’s never to late to start, and with this info, we’ll show you how to get a HEAD start…
Being new to social media shouldn’t hold you back from content creation. But creating content on social media if you are new and starting now can be an overwhelming experience. Different platforms, different content, and a whole lot of suggested strategies from online gurus. To help you with your social media content creation we have created this quick guide with updated information to help you in your content creation journey.
THE PLAN AND PLATFORMS
Here’s a run down of each major platform you need to know about.
TikTok
TikTok is the leading platform right now that’s transformed the game for consumerism. This platform is built on authenticity and has broken the “aesthetic standards” for content that Instagram has perpetuated. It’s great for exposure, driving sales & building a community.
Instagram
Most people still use Instagram for photos only, although the app is pushing Reels and is making plans for moving to being a video based platform. It’s a great platform for driving sales and building a community.
Pinterest
Pinterest is a search engine, not a social media platform; however, it’s worth mentioning as it is a powerful one. It helps drive sales and traffic to your website, or social media, as you can link external links to each Pin. Many creators, including ourselves, repurpose our TikTok videos to Pinterest Idea Pins for extra exposure.
YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. It’s the platform where most creators look to move to for monetization and make direct income from their content creation efforts. YouTube Shorts, YouTube’s short form video content type content has recently announced that they will be rewarding creators.
Twitter
Twitter is where you can provide real-time ‘tweets’, such as thoughts, opinions and even photos.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great platform for those who want to build their professional personal brand, that ties into their career. It’s great for sharing opinions, qualifying leads and connecting with other professionally.
Facebook
Facebook allows you, as a brand, to share photos, updates, videos and now Reels. Many countries don’t have access to Instagram and TikTok, but are on Facebook, so for brands that are targeting people worldwide, we suggest repurposing IG Reels or TikToks to Facebook Reels.
Don’t worry, there’s no need be on all of these. Choose those that suit your industry and marketing goals. We deem the essentials to be Instagram and TikTok. If you’re already on Instagram and TikTok, you can easily repurpose that content to YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook and even LinkedIn and Twitter! We’ll get into that later…
COMPETITOR RESEARCH
Shop around and see what others are doing. No, we’re not telling you to copy them, but note down which creators you like and what you like about them. Do you like their filming style, their set up, their community? Take note or multiple different accounts and what you like about them, then see if you can merge any of the preferences together. Can you add a personal twist to any? Take inspiration from what you genuinely enjoy about different people’s content.
For example, what you like about person A is their filming setup and the way they speak to the camera, while what you like about person B is their extroverted personality on camera and what you like about person C is their authority. Merge those together, and now you know what you want your filming setup to be, your online persona and what you want to be an authority on. This is our favourite exercise and we do this every 3-6 months with ourselves and our clients and updated our strategy and action plan accordingly.
BEING CONSISTENT WITH ONE THING
One thing successful creators do incredibly is harnessing one thing and staying consistent with it. By one “thing” we mean anything, it can be a quirk, lighting, setup, filming style — whatever it is, find something unique to you and stay consistent with it. Take a look at this therapist Amy Millie on TikTok, she starts every single one of her videos with “hey baby”. Or this makeup influencer, Sarah, who is known for her extroverted, loud personality. Whatever it is for you, embrace it and use it in your favour to stand out. Don’t stress yourself with trying to figure out, as content creation is an art and practice that might take some trial and error.
VANITY METRICS ARE OUT
Don’t focus on the vanity metrics! Vanity metrics being your followers and your views. So many expect immediate growth, spike in views and followers (especially on TikTok) but we forget that slow growth is okay and normal too. Slow and steady is actually good and healthy for your account. Think about it, for a video to go viral, oftentimes it’s very generic and relevant to the masses. So what happens is you’ll get a massive spike in followers, but not necessarily in engagement. Good engagement comes with a genuine interest in your content, which is what a community is.
A community takes time to build and it doesn’t happen over night. Everyone thinks that they want fast and easy growth, but ultimately what you want is a community Because with a community you can make sales. Let’s take Boss Babe as an example, their primary goal for the first couple of years, when they started their IG, was building a community. They now have a large following and engaged community that they are able to monetize from.
ANALYTICS ARE YOUR BFF
Vanity metrics are out, meaning how many views and followers you have - but checking your analytics is in. Analytics are your feedback on what to drop and what to continue doing. Look at your top performing content and keep replicating content like that. This is a process you should always be doing, so keep refining & repeating! Here are what some of the major analytics mean that you’ll see across all social media platforms…
Impressions: the amount of times your content is displayed or viewed.
Reach: the number of people who see your content.
Engagement: how much your content was interacted with.
TYPES OF CONTENT TO CREATE
Since we all know by now that 75-100% of our content should be video based, here are 3 different types of content that you can produce.
video with voiceover, e.g. vlogs, showing a product, tutorial etc… Like this tutorial we’ve made on how to create more content by turning on a simple feature on your iPhone.
getting ready & talking, P.S. no, you don’t need to be a beauty influencer to do this, it’s a great intimate-type video for any industry. Like this GRWM video we made on low engagement!
video with text overlay, e.g. inspirational quote, thoughts, tips or trending sounds. Like this one we’ve made, combining a trending sound at the time.
QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
There is no need to pump out content multiple times per day anymore. This was the general consensus for Instagram and TikTok previously; however, things have changed. Rather than posting multiple times per day, focus on posting 1x quality video per day and make sure that you have the following things in place to ensure that the video is high quality.
good & natural lighting
text cropped correctly so it’s visible on screen
using hooks at the beginning of your video
cutting out the dead pauses during talking videos
using keywords in your video, description, enclosed captions & hashtags
adding enclosed captions to your video and even putting in the extra effort and typing out the important parts that you don’t want your audience to miss
REPURPOSE TO OTHER PLATFORMS
Don’t rely on just one platform! If you’re creating content for TikTok, you can save your video without the watermark (we show you how in our Freebie which you can download here) and post it as a Pinterest Idea Pin, a YouTube Short and an IG Reel! You can even take the caption you write out for TikTok and make it into a LinkedIn post with some changes, or take snippets of that caption and make a tweet. Our best tip is to plan your content ideas and 1 content idea can be 6 + pieces of content across multiple platforms!
CLICHE, but be unapologetically you
This is so much more important than you think. Remember when we said how important having a community is? Time isn’t the only factor that comes into play when building a community — rather, trust is. A community is essentially a group of people who trust you and what you have to say, and that comes with trust! To build trust, it’s so important to be relatable and personable with your audience. People are naturally nosey and lazy - remember that when creating content. Creators who overshare tend to do well and creators who also get to the point quickly, tend to do well.
Don’t overshare what you’re uncomfortable with sharing, but whatever relates to your niche, don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and share with your audience. Maybe you’re a business coach and you used to struggle with money, job hopping and anxiety. Share that, story-tell on that — because someone might relate to it and furthermore, it helps your audience trust you more!
need more help?
Book a 30 minute call with us to get personalized advice from me (Miriam) here.
