How do you, as the content producer for your company, create compelling content for your social media sites?

Make your content engaging and appealing to your target market. Simple.

A recent article in Fast Company, called the Art of Dialogue said “brands ought to start acting less like things and more like people, and they should engage traditional humans, their consumers, in dialogue.” After all, people don’t want to talk with a black and red icon representing your brand, they want to talk to someone representing it. “Consumers don’t want to have a relationship with just this cold logo.” So how do you make your brand more personal?

Give  your brand a personality that matches your company culture.

Sit down with your creative team (whomever that may be; if you’re an entrepreneur, find someone like me, and some other marketing strategists and do a round table session) and figure out what are the elements (traits) that make up your brand. What do you stand for? How do you want to be recognized in the marketplace? What makes you stand out from your competition? What are the words you use to describe the characteristics of your brand? Are you funny like Southwest Airlines? Are you serious like Allstate? Are you lovey and cuddly like Charmin?

Make the lists, elaborate on them, and then take these traits, elements of recognition, and characteristics, and get creative with them. Weave them throughout your marketing. Tell the story of your business in new and interesting ways that get your tribe (target market) involved and entrenched in the story.

In your social media, make sure you use these creative elements to do (what I call) the three most important E’s in social media marketing: Educate, Entertain, and Engage.

Below are a couple examples of how to combine all three E’s:

“People love bacon. Sooo much. Every time I post anything about bacon, it usually gets really good engagement,” quoted the Fast Company article. This person, who is a social media coordinator for Denny’s, found a topic their audience liked through trial and error. She uses pictures of bacon to inform her audience of Denny’s specials, and to entertain them with humorous stats about American’s obsession with bacon.

Sometimes this is necessary in order to see what your tribe “likes” and comments on. Other times, you just know your tribe like it when you speak about certain topics. How do you know? Your clients, prospects, and loyal followers ask you questions about certain subjects all the time. The questions they ask you provide you with golden nuggets to take, and transform into value-add content on your blog and social sites, to enforce your subject matter expertise.

Here’s an example, applied to a solo entrepreneur so you can see that anyone can do this, not just Denny’s. You’re an esthetician. You want to talk about the importance of the brush and the sponge for everything. Applying makeup, applying masks, washing your face, whatever. Your primary clientele is young professional women, and they have communicated to you the difficulties they have adequately cleansing their faces, applying foundation, etc.

{image created by Meghann Conter}

So do you just keep telling them over and over with words the various things they need to do with said brushes and sponges? No! You show them visually. Please, take some time to laugh at my amazing cartooning skills:

I have given some personality to this pretend esthetician’s brand, and it took me 15 minutes from start to finish to draw it, add captions, and put it up. If this caricature representation of your brand and subject matter is going to be something that you can repeat throughout your content, I would hire a cartoonist to do a much better job. They could make the cartoon representatives of your brand versatile – with different expressions, outfits, props, whatever – so that you can use these cartoons on your blog, Facebook, Pinterest, on printed postcards, calendars, you name it. Get creative!

There are, of course, countless other ideas of how to make your brand engaging, entertaining, and educational. I will share more in future blog posts.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts. What ideas do you have?

February 2013 Issue