EIEIO – A Content Strategy for your Social Media Posts
Social Media is a key element of most business’s marketing strategy. Using it is a great way to quickly build a community, engage with potential customers and generate brand exposure for relatively small outlay. However, if you only have a small marketing team, or maybe you’re a solopreneur, regularly coming up with great content for your social media posts can be massive challenge.
One of the tools I use to help me when I’m putting my content together is EIEIO – no I haven’t lost my marbles honest, it’s an initialism that helps me to focus on creating content that covers the following areas:-
1) Content that Entertains –a really great way of getting directly to your target audience and engaging with them on a human level. This type of content is often funny, frequently shared and helps to transform the perception of your company from “them” to being “just like me” in the eyes of your readers. It’s important to remember that this type of content needn’t be directly related to your product or services, but for it to do its job it does need to appeal to your audience.
2)Content that Inspires – a great opportunity to share case studies and testimonials showing how you’ve helped a client overcome a challenge, or how a product of yours provided a solution. You’ll know you’re striking the right cord with your audience if your followers start sharing your content – they’re sharing it because what you’re saying resonates with them and they want to pass it on.
3)Content that Educates – webinars, blogs, posts that give advice – tips on putting a cashflow forecast together, or a how to guide to buying a mattress for example. This type of content is valuable as it explains to your readers what you can do for them and it appeals to their rational side – you’re solving a problem that they have. You’re aiming to create content that people want to share as this will get you maximum exposure.
4)Content that Informs – Infographics are a very useful tool to use . Humans are visual creatures and information presented in picture form is much more likely to be remembered and retained. If you’ve got lots of facts and figures then using infographics can really help you to get your message across to your audience.
5)Content that Opens a Dialogue – Social Media is all about interaction and having a conversation – so encourage people to answer a question and to ask you questions and interact with your content. You can also use this type of post to encourage people to sign up to your newsletter, download a “white paper” or take a free course.
