If you haven’t noticed yet, content creation is all the rave right now. From social media posts to ordinary people showcasing their favourite things, everybody is creating content. For small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), content creation can help enhance your brand and customer base if you can do it right.
Content creation is the process of identifying a new topic and deciding which form you want the content to take. Different forms of content include articles, photography, social media posts and blogging amongst many others.
For SMEs, content creation can be a great avenue to build your brand awareness. You can create content in many ways and in some cases, you can partner with someone (influencer) to create content for your business.
In this article, we give you some top tips for content creation for your SME.
Tip No. 1: Identify Your Content Creation Goals
Before the fun stuff of creating the content, you need to know what it is you are creating the content for. Your content strategy needs to outline what you are working towards and act as a measurement of your success.
You need to outline specifics such as ‘increase website traffic by 15%’ or ‘increase brand awareness by 5%’. You also need to set brand-specific quality standards such as ‘all videos must be 4k resolution or more’.
All in all, your content must be relevant to your audience, engaging and interesting for your audience, authentic to your business and its values and likeable to people outside your customer base.
Top Tip No. 2: Know Your Customers
You need to know what your customers like in terms of content. Do they like articles? Videos? Or infographics? Knowing this will help you create content that resonates with them and will ultimately build your brand awareness and engagement.
According to research, in South Africa audiences prefer social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. These three platforms dominate in terms of daily usage and can significantly influence consumer behaviour and trends.
The above research shows which platforms to target for better engagement but what kind of content you post is up to you. Additionally, you need to define your audience according to certain attributes such as age, income, location, interests etc. This will help you create specific content which hits all areas of your customer base.
Top Tip No. 3: Keep an Eye on Your Competition
You need to know how your competition is creating its content. Before you even start creating your content, look at how your closest competitors are going about creating their content. Watch their websites and social media pages to see the content forms they are using and if they have any influencers pushing their content.
Additionally, monitoring your competition can show you what works and what doesn’t work. Once you identify all the elements, you can go back to your content strategy and see what you need to improve and what you can add.
Top Tip No. 4: Find the Right Content Form for Your Business
It’s no use trying to create all forms of content. This will only waste your time, money and confuse your audience. You need to create content that aligns with your business and the message you are trying to convey.
You can choose to either write articles (inform people about how to use your services or products), run ads on social media, videos or email campaigns.
Top Tip No. 5: Utilise Your Connections
Nothing will help build your brand better than the connections you have. Your loyal customers are the first relationship you should leverage to increase your profits through content creation. Your loyal customers are more likely to buy what you are advertising over new customers.
You also need to leverage networks such as social media groups. You can either join an existing online business forum or start your own. This helps you gain information directly from your customers about your business and can be a great place to advertise anything new.
Lastly, you need to lean into the influencer industry. Influencers are the most popular form of advertising and content creation right now. You can get an influencer to advertise your brand through an affiliate link. This will not only drive people to your website but will also ensure that people buy what you are promoting.
Top Tip No. 6: Use Each Platform’s Content Creation Tools
To make things easier and affordable for yourself, use the content creation tools on each social media platform. For example, you can use Facebook’s creator studio to create and manage content across the platform. Or you can explore Instagram’s branded content tools to make it easier to promote content in your feed or stories.
To make it easier for yourself, the first thing to do is to get your business social media pages verified on each platform. This will make it easy for your audience to find you and for you to stand out as a trustworthy business.
Top Tip No. 7: Stay on Top of the Trends
Social media trends change all the time. This is mostly because social media is determined by its users and what they like at the time. You need to keep up with these ever-changing trends to ensure your content aligns with the interests of the masses.
You also need to be able to spot any trends that are here today and gone tomorrow while also keeping an eye on trends that are gradually shifting how customers interact with content. This will also help you create personalised content for your audience.
Top Tip No. 8: Batch Up Your Content
You don’t have to create content only when the need comes up or when inspiration hits you. By following the trends and user preferences, you can batch up content so that you constantly have something that you can post or promote.
Batching up your content saves you time and helps you make time to research your next batch of content. This is especially helpful if you are looking to create different forms of content.
Top Tip No. 9: Repurpose Your Content
You don’t have to always post new content. You can reuse your existing content and change its form to present it in a new way. For example, you can take an old article and change it into an infographic or take a video and turn it into pictures.
To reuse your content properly, you need to take your original content and update most of it with fresh information. This can include updating stats, new images, removing broken links or adding visuals.
Using these top tips you can start creating content that works for your business. Content creation is all about bringing people to your business so they can buy what you are selling. Remember to create a comprehensive content strategy and to have fun with it.
For actionable business advice, visit SME Advice to speak to one of our experts.
