Creating social media content is the backbone of any social media strategy. Without content, there is nothing to post, like, share or analyze – and it is impossible to promote products or services online.
Social media content creation can be anything from writing a catchy headline to developing a large integrated social campaign with a large team and a few influencers.
For any of these options or anything in between, you need a content marketing strategy to effectively develop great content and content creation tools to do it effectively. We will tell you all about it in this post.
What is content creation?
Content creation is the process of creating content. But what does it mean?
Content can be just about anything, from blog posts to TikTok, white papers, and even books. Essentially, content is anything that provides information or entertainment. For marketers and brands, content creation is an important way to build and maintain relationships with potential customers.
Let’s look at all the potential elements that can be involved in turning your ideas into content specifically for social media.
What is social media content creation?
Social media content creation is the process of creating written content, photos, graphics, and videos for various social media platforms.
Social media content must comply with established limits on the number of characters, image sizes, and video length. You have to cram a lot of value into a very small space.
It’s also important to note that social media content creation is much more interactive than other forms of content creation. You are not creating content in a bubble. Whether you’re highlighting user-generated content, creating a TikTik Stitch, or using popular audio to guide your content ideas, you’re part of a larger ecosystem.
Here are some elements related to social media content creation. (In the next section, we’ll delve into how all of these roles work together to shape your social media content strategy.)
- Research: Checking the latest social media trends and using social media and social media analytics to understand what content your social audience is craving.
- Writing: Bringing words to the screen, from titles and video overlay text to copying long posts on Facebook or LinkedIn.
- Photography/videography: photography and/or videography, such as product shots or backstage tours. This may require professional equipment, but depending on your needs, it can also be done using a smartphone.
- Video editing: Assembling clips into a finished product.
- Graphic Design: Combining words and graphics into a meme, infographic, cover or any other visual you use on social media.
Let’s bring these ideas to life!
1. Do your research
Any good process starts with research. Sure, that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean you can just post whatever you want on your social channels and wrap up.
Before you start creating content, you need to know what kind of content resonates with your audience or your potential target audience.
If you already have a regular social media following, you can start with social media analytics. This will help you understand what is already working for you so you can model that success.
But social media is changing fast, so you can’t limit your research to your own accounts. Social listening is a good way to get an idea of what’s going on in your industry and what people are talking about when they talk about your business on social media.
Finally, follow popular hashtags, topics, and audios. You won’t necessarily jump on every emerging trend, but you will discover some good digital content creation ideas that can help your content achieve more engagement and wider reach.
2. Set goals
Now that you have an idea of what’s going on in your industry, you can start setting goals for your social media content. Are you trying to attract people to your blog? Expand your circle of subscribers? Making sales through social commerce? Maybe all of the above?
The type of content you create will vary depending on what you want to achieve. For example, your call to action will be very different for a sales post compared to a post designed to build brand awareness and engagement.
It’s a good idea to flesh out your goals using the SMART goal setting framework. It forces you to think in detail about what you can achieve with your social content and how you can achieve what you want.
3. Brainstorm creatively
Whether you’re a one-man shop or you have a large social team, take the time to present some ideas on the board. (It doesn’t matter if the real board is literal or metaphorical, you just get all your ideas in one place.)
This is the “no bad ideas” time. Everyone on your team has a unique social media experience, both personally and professionally, that will influence their content ideas and expectations. Giving free access to everyone brings all this knowledge into your shared think tank, where it can be translated into high-quality social media campaigns.
4. Assign roles
Remember all those social media content creation components we mentioned above? If you haven’t already assigned team members to each of these tasks, now is the time to do so.
It’s also time to set up a robust social media approval process so everyone understands how their work fits into the big picture and how their deadlines impact the rest of the team.
If you are a small business owner, you may not have anyone to assign roles to. Do not panic! Remember, it’s all right. You can definitely start by creating all your content yourself. It doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming.
Even big teams don’t have to do everything themselves. This is a good time to consider whether you want to outsource some of your digital content creation tasks to freelance writers or designers. You should also consider how to receive and include user-generated content, as well as how to incorporate curated content into your social media marketing strategy.
Finally, consider whether you want to work with external content creators, also known as influencers. This could be for a specific campaign or a permanent relationship.
5. Create a content calendar
The social media content calendar lets you schedule your social media content set so you can get the most out of your digital content creation efforts.
6. Plan your content
Once you’ve completed your content calendar, it’s time to set up your content for publication. Of course, you can post each post manually at the scheduled time, but this is a huge waste of time and also leads to simple errors like typos and broken links.
Advance content planning gives you a real-time view of your content plan and gives you time to double-check all the details. It also simplifies your workflow by consolidating the time you actually spend posting content into one block, instead of interrupting your work throughout the day.
7. Build your content library
There is no need to create every piece of social content from scratch. On your busiest days, you’ll thank yourself for having the foresight to create a content library.
Any successful social media post can be turned into a template for future posts. You can also add approved images to your content library, whether they’re created in-house or sourced from a free resource.
As your content library grows, you will have more opportunities to create new social content without having to re-create the wheel.
8. Analyze your results
The content creation process ends where it started. Analyze your results to see what worked and what didn’t, and use your findings to guide your research and plan what to do next.
Set new goals for yourself and repeat all over again.
8 Content Creation Tools That Save Time for Social Media Managers
1.Hootsuite
Hootsuite can boost social media content creation in several ways.
First, Hootsuite Composer allows you to create content for multiple social networks in one place. You can even set up and customize one piece of content to post effectively across multiple accounts.
Composer also includes an extensive free media library and powerful image editing tools so you can start creating content without any photography or design skills of your own. For more custom design support in the Hootsuite dashboard, you can add the Hootsuite Canva integration.
Once your content is ready to go, Hootsuite Publisher will allow you to schedule posts according to your content calendar. It even provides customized recommendations about the best time to post based on your own social analytics.
Hootsuite’s content library, collaborative drafts, social listening features, and content curation tools also make it easy to create social media content.
2 Visme
Visme is a design tool used to create infographics, animations, videos, charts, social graphics, and other visual content for social media sharing.
Visme’s extensive font library and customizable color options make it easy to personalize your brand and create a series of cohesive images that embody your brand’s style.
Source: Visme
3.Audiogram
It’s a great social media content creation tool for anyone who podcasts or creates other audio content. You simply upload or import the audio and Audiogram creates a social video with automatically generated subtitles and an animated waveform.
This is an easy way to make visual posts out of audio content.
4. Lately.ai
Lately takes any existing long content – text, audio or video – and converts it into social media content to share on all your channels.
Remember how we said that research is important? When you connect Lately to your Hootsuite account, it uses artificial intelligence to self-learn using your social media metrics, taking care of most of your content and keyword research for you.
We have an entire blog post dedicated to AI content creation tools. Check it out to learn how artificial intelligence can help create content for your social media customer service and sales team, as well as your social channels.
5. RiteBoost
RiteBoost helps you create social media content by automatically generating static images or GIFs from your message text. It also automates some of the more mundane aspects of content creation, such as adding hashtags, emoji, and credits.
6.Pictographer
Pictographr is a drag-and-drop design tool with a built-in image library and an impressive collection of fonts. This is useful for graphs and charts, memes, or just to add visual appeal to any social content.
7 Grammarly
Hootsuite has built-in spell checking, but for a more thorough check of your social content, an editing tool like Grammarly is recommended. This AI-powered app corrects spelling, of course, but also offers style and tone recommendations to keep your content effective and easy to understand.
Source: Grammarly
8. HemingwayApp
Social content should be crisp, clear and understandable at a glance. The Hemingway app helps with all of the above by analyzing the readability of your content and providing recommendations to make your text less complex and more concise.
Source: Hemingway App.
Save time by managing your social media presence with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversions, engage your audience, measure results, and more. Try it for free today.