Lessons Learned: How to create social media content

Editor’s note: This is part 5 in the series of Lessons Learned:  Easy tips on how to create and grow a social media program.   This series includes a discussion on the following topics:

1. Create a Social Media Policy
2. Research your business
3. Set goals
4. Write an Editorial Calendar
5. Create content
6. Start the program
7. Grow your social media program and overall web presence
8. Handling mistakes and attacks

Create content

People learn in one of three ways:  reading, watching or doing.  Up until now, the web was primarily a textual platform, ignoring a very large audience of people who learn by watching or doing.  By adding multimedia elements to your program, you have the opportunity to reach customers and clients in the formats they are most comfortable with.

TIP: When creating content remember that engaging your customers is an integral part of every social media campaign.  Ask engaging questions.  Ask your customers to share their stories, photos or video.

Write copy

Text is still an extremely useful way to present a company’s messaging.  Core textual platforms include blogs and the status update section of micro blogs and social media platforms.

• How to blog:
  • Use Wordpress as your blog platform as it has the best plug-ins for visibility and customization
  • Commit to a long-term plan: write an editorial calendar, outsource blog writing to key members of your senior management to provide a more-rounded view of their company
  • Include a photo or video to support your text
  • Keep your text short, include links to key sections of your website
  • Use Q&A sections on LinkedIN to help find interesting industry topics
• How to promote your blog
  • Include a link to your blog in employee’s email signature
  • Register your blog in RSS feeds throughout the web
  • Include links in all outbound marketing materials
  • Use tools like Hootsuite, Ping.FM or Tweetdeck to promote blogs via status updates on all relevant SM platforms: Twitter, LinkedIN, Facebook, Delicious
  • Tag your blog posts so they appear higher in search results
  • Add an RSS feed to your blog so people can sign up for auto delivery
  • Submit links to each blog post among RELEVANT news aggregator sites like:  Yahoo Buzz, Digg, Delicious, Kirtsey, StumbleUpon, Reddit and more

Use photos and video to promote your social media program

Create video

There is no denying that video is a highly successful platform for company messaging and new video cameras such as Flip and Kodak makes shooting and editing video easy

• Create short videos of your company
  • Interview senior management and employees about the company or other topics
  • Show customers interacting
  • Use video to clarify areas of your business
  • Show video of any interesting events
  • Create a commercial for yourself, put on above sites
  • Upload video to YouTube, Mixx and other relevant video platforms (use TubeMogul for easy distribution across mass platforms)
• Tape record your presentations and make them available via podcast
• Create a photo page on flickr, search the site and friend people who have used your company tags in their photo descriptions
• Create a company page on YouTube, search the site and friend people who have used your company tags in their photo descriptions
• Engage your users!  Ask customers to share their photos, video or audio with your audiences
• Include multimedia in all outbound PR efforts

Related posts:

• Lessons Learned: Easy Tips on How to Create and Grow a Social Media Program
• Lessons Learned: Starting and growing your social media program
• Lessons Learned: Mistakes and attacks in social media
• Lessons Learned: Setting Goals in Social Media
• Lessons Learned: How to research your business

Tagged as: audio, serena ehrlich, Social Media, social media content, text, video