Every day, the average social media user scrolls through their feed at the length of the Statue of Liberty. The problem for businesses and brands is that they are not creating content that makes people pause and look at it. If no one sees your content, then your brand can never take off. A successful brand needs to find ways to catch the attention of its audience. Here are 3 essential tips to engage your audience and stop the scroll:
Draw attention with posts
Attention is always the main goal for marketers. Photos are a great way to stand out from constant rows of text. Photos with faces perform 40% better, so find a face to attach to your brand (it doesn’t need to be your face). Visually compelling graphics also help. Social media users rapidly scroll through posts, so you need imagery that immediately catches the eye.
When trying to draw attention, remember not to repeat content that’s been frequently used before. No one is going to pay attention to memes and jokes they have already seen. People scroll past things they are familiar with. Appealing posts are ones that stay varied. Keep posts from being repetitive by balancing selfies, images and text. Images may stand out on some platforms, but the occasional text-based post would be memorable on a platform like Instagram.
Video
Most people watch up to 100 minutes of video a day, and most social media platforms have noticed this. There are many types of video content that your brand can utilize. Video content can be curated; which is heavily edited, scripted and deliberately set up. These are often sales pitches for the brand. Content can also be live, which is unrehearsed and not permanent, but can have a large engagement and reach.
Content often splits between being informative or being entertaining (or “infotainment”, which tries to do both). Good entertainment includes user generated content or Q&A’s, because both allow audience interaction. “How to” articles or behind the scenes content is a good way of providing informational content. Videos drive a large amount of engagement, so try to use any or all of these examples as much as possible.
Customer centric content
Remember, your content is never about you. Too often people post about themselves while forgetting to address audience questions. No matter how popular you are, people only care about what they need and if you can provide that.
Always consider if your content will draw the user to your brand, and speak directly to your audiences’ interests and needs. You can never hit your entire audience with one post, so speak directly to the person you want the message to reach.
Social media plays a large role in our lives, so it must play a large role for your business as well. If you utilize these methods and apply them to your posts, audiences that are used to scrolling through their feeds will stop and pay attention to your content.
Note: This article was created from a speech given by Sherri Barna, at a LevelUp conference held over Zoom.
Sherri Barna has 10 years of experience in social media. She first worked for an international charity organization, then started her own social media consulting business, Purple Bean Media.
