11 Content Marketing Tips That Can Work Wonders For Your Brand On Facebook

Why do we all remember some brands more than the other? Take brands like Amul, Durex and in the recent times, Zomato – how do they stay on the top of our minds all the time? That, people, is the power of content. I have been a keen observer of the various types of content that brands post the last few years. It is imperative that you push out relevant content to keep your brand on the top of the mind of your audience and also keep them engaged. But before you set up your content bucket, you’ll have to figure out what kind of content works best for you. If you’ve not been getting the right results, then you’re just not doing it right.

In this article today, I am going to share with you how to define your brand’s way of communication and ideate content that would suit both your brand and your audience.

Why do we follow the people we currently follow?

For instance, why do you follow people like Robin Sharma, Jay Shetty or any other motivational speakers for that matter? The primary reason is that their content helps us solve our problems. While creating content, the objective of your brand/product must not be to sell your product across your audience network, but to help people.

Before we understand 11 different styles of content that works well on Facebook, here is a quick overview on strategizing your content marketing plans in 3 steps. These 3 steps are something that I personally follow and would recommend you to follow for your brand.

#1. Defining The Purpose Of Your Channel:

I have a question to ask you!

Why should I follow you on Social Media?

Because you are my friend?

Because we know each other?

Well, people don’t follow brands for those reasons.

They follow brands when those brands give them a purpose. Purpose can be anything: offers, industry news, brand stories etc.

The above purposes are purely commercial.

Once the tone of your brand is set, the road ahead becomes smoother. Here is how I have defined the purpose of the following brands:

• ChuChuTV: The brand initially published only content for kids. We shifted the focus from children and made it parenting centric by giving a lot of Parenting Tips and Solutions which expanded our audience and also aided us is helping people.
• Sorav Jain: The purpose of my brand has always been to help people with regards to digital and social media marketing. Recently, I have introduced crosswords and puzzles into my content bucket to introduce the fun factor while learning.
• Kay Fashions: Sharing the latest trends/fashion that is followed in the market and the latest collection in the store.
• Wink Salon: The content bucket of this salon includes posts that depict the latest trends in beauty and grooming, and great offers.
• Urban Tree: The Urban Tree blog focuses on constantly publishing about Chennai, it’s hangouts and the current affairs giving a little #NammaChennai flavour.

So define a purpose of your page. A purpose that adds value.

#2. Solve Your Customer’s Problems:

How does your brand help your customers?

Why should people adopt your brand/ products?

What are the common issues that your customers face?

And how good are you at solving them?

The brands had to walk that extra mile to come with some problem solving techniques to win the trust of their audience.

• ChuChu TV: How, with rhymes, parents make their children start their schooling from home.
• Sorav Jain: Learn how I have helped certain brands and how that can help you.
• Kay Fashions: How customers look their best on their special day with our apparels.
• Wink Salon: How we make our customer’s look and feel better after our services and treatments.
• Urban Tree: How we have helped 1000+ families find a better home.

You position yourself as a market and thought leader when you begin to help people and solve your customers’ problems.

So, solve your audience’s problems by creating your content strategy around it.

#3. Build Your Content Bucket:

 Before you start managing a page, can you please create a content bucket and parent categories?

Ask this before you create your content:

• What kind of content does your audience like to consume?
• How are you going to add value to them through your content marketing techniques?
• How much potential does your content hold to engage your audience?
• In what intervals are you going to publish your content?

If you need to tap into the full potential of your content, make sure it falls into one of these buckets.

1. Helpful: Content that helps your audience. For example, on my page I post – how to’s, give tips and tricks and regularly share my experience with respect to the industry.
2. Inspiring: Content that inspires your audience or motivates them to connect with you for long. I post a lot of motivational quotes, workshop photos and stories revolving around social media marketing industry and results that my clients obtain.
3. Informational: This can also be promotional. Many pages just boast about their business and that alone won’t make any great sense. And hence, you should add information on an off on your page with respect to your products / services / programs. So put a calendar in place for offers, announcements, product launches.
4. Entertaining: Social Media for many is about killing time, they are looking for entertainment. People like to consume videos the most these days. Memes that would initiate funny conversations. So think of content that can engage your audience, it could be quizzes, polls, videos, memes and something that keeps them occupied.
5. Current Affair Based: This is where your sixth sense starts working. How can you connect special days to your brand? How can you create content around a celebrity’s death and pay a tribute to them? How can you keep a tab of important days that matters to your brand? On my page I usually post about #NewThingsInDigital that brings the audience back to our social media channel.

To apply these 5 Key Engagement Mantras to your business you would first have to stop posting 30/60 posts a month and focus on creating 5 to 10 posts a month that will add some value to your audience. I personally feel that, today is not an era where you do a lot of post, its time you focus on posts that can survive for long. I call them ‘Long-Haul Posts’.

11 Content tips that can work wonders for your brand on Facebook:

Now that the purpose and content buckets are in place, here are some content marketing tips that has worked really well for some of the brands we manage at my digital marketing agency.

#1. Invest In A Long Haul Post For Longer Success:

For our client, Wink we invested in a long haul post which was posted on March 7^th 2017. The post was made 6 months after the salon was opened and it was made to give the audience a visual treat of the salon. The salon pictures were put together in the form of a series post and it is boosted on and off even today. This has resulted in a huge number of likes, comments and shares and inspires people to look into the post. So, treat your content as a product and sell your product as much as you can. We have boosted this post for 1$ a day and it gets us a fair bit of traction, wowness, inquiries and shares.

Like the above, strategize 5 long haul post that you believe can benefit your business.

#2. Client Testimonial for Page 3 Factor:

Testimonials are expressions that support your business. And if it’s coming from the mouth of a renowned celebrity or a famous personality then it only adds up to your advantage. One such testimonial came from R Madhavan, for Wink, and we boosted it as a long haul post to build the credibility of the brand. Every brand, should aim at building case studies or testimonials with influencers and celebrities. They are all very well received on Social Media.

This is like creating a Page 3 factor on your social media channels.

#3. Make Longer Videos For Creating An Audience That Matters:

I am okay even if your page don’t have the defined number of likes. Number of likes on Facebook is equal to boosting your own ego for the sake of it. It just adds credibility to boast that you have largest number of followers but we all know it makes no sense otherwise. So focus on creating some great videos about your brand.

When it comes to your own videos, especially if you are selling something serious then begin with investing in a good thumbnail. Do an A/B Split Test to see which thumbnail of yours would work with your audience. Make longer videos to differentiate between the viewer who has seen 25% of the video and 90% of the video. Once you are well aware of your audience, boost the post for the 25% people. Get in touch with the 90% people as they are interested in what you are doing and may also buy what you’re selling.

I target the people who fall in the 90% category for my workshop as they are keen on knowing more about the digital space.

#4. Number Based Series:

A number based series generally works like a one-off catalog. I’ve always observed the behavior of the audience of being tempted to read blogs that have numbers on the titles. This happens because numbers give the impression that the post is well organized and to the point.

People tend to flip through it or sometimes the number inspires them to share it. It can be in the form of a series post with visuals that are appealing to the eye. Wink showcased some of the best hairstyles that were trending in Chennai in the form of a number based list.

#5. Go Local & Use Regional Language:

Going local would connect more with the audience and their emotions. You can go local and use the regional language to post about the latest news that has been circulating. I have used Hindi, Marathi, and Tamil till now and all of these have worked and increased engagement by 500%.

#6. Create One Content Property that’s Solely Yours:

With ChuChu TV we started the ‘Happiness is…..’ series. We have one post of this series going on their page every day. It talks about the happiness that parents get in the little things like “Happiness is when your kid finishes their food” and ones like given below.

I have also started one such crossword series on my Instagram page. I post one from the series every Sunday that serves both as an activity for fun and a tool for engagement.

#7. Test & Play With Different Types of Videos:

Testing with different kinds of videos for your brand would make you understand what would best work for your audience. The following are the different styles of videos that I tested which also worked well.

-Shorter Videographics Do Well

Videos which are short and generally take 20-25 seconds work really well. It is also a great strategy to repost the content that you have already used. We converted an old series post of ChuChu TV into a video and it went viral. (Using this technique you can make stories with morals, inspiring quotes, state stats and facts from a post that you have already made.)

-Videos with Subtitles

Videos which have subtitles in them are more likely to grab attention of your audience. When it’s a static video, subtitles are necessary. What a lot of people think is that subtitles are not needed when it’s a conversation. What they need to understand is that videos with subtitles are more watched as they are easier to understand.

-Meme Style Videos

Meme style videos have also become a trend these days. In these videos the content bar is static with the same text shown throughout the video. Videos of these kinds are more likely to go viral and create larger impact. Here is something of the like we created for a kid’s carnival in Chennai.

We also made a similar video with our own team at echoVME, which you can see below.

View this post on Instagram

I am sure all you agency guys can relate to this. #echoVMETurns7, #7YearsOfechoVME

A post shared by Sorav Jain (@soravjain) on Feb 5, 2018 at 5:53am PST

#8. Be The First On Festive/ Special Day Posts:

• Just don’t say Happy Independence Day or Happy Diwali – Find a relevancy to your brand’s purpose
• Strike an emotional chord
• Give tips, create value around special days – it’s a campaign opportunity

#9. Bollywood & Cricket Will Never Die:

The best way to immediately strike a chord amongst Indians is to talk about cricket. People here exhibit great reverence to this game and it is something that is tied up with their emotion.

Movies have always proven to be influencing and some of them have even given birth to various pop-cultures. Making posts that refer to movies directly will immediately lure a lot of attention to your posts.

#10. Co-Create Content Strategies:

This is by far one of the best strategies and is mutually beneficial. Co-creating brings better and fresh ideas to the table. It also comes with the added advantage of a larger audience – followers from all the creators working on the content.

#11. Current Affair Based Stories Work Wonders:

Talking about whatever is the hottest topic or is most likely to be on the top of the mind of your audience has a higher chance of garnering attention than talking about generic topics.

The above are all tested and proven methods of marketing your content and building a base of relevant audience. Have some more ideas? Share them in the comments section.