These days, having a strong social media presence is key to growing your brand and selling your product. But, these things don’t just come easy.

A strong social media presence requires consistent content creation which can be difficult and very time-consuming.

As a small business, the odds are against you because you oftentimes double as the social media manager, content creator, and business manager. It’s not easy, but some creators have managed to get it right by embracing what makes them unique and sharing their process.

Here are a few ideas other businesses/creators use for creating high-quality content.

1. Focus on authenticity

Staying true to yourself and being authentic is an excellent way to start. What can you say/teach better than anyone else? What do you like to do? How would you teach something differently from others? What’s your unique style of creating things? What principles do you live by? These questions help you identify your strengths and your unique way of creating content.

Phidelia, a digital creator, shares how she maintains authenticity in her content. In her words, “People who follow you on the internet just want to consume and so there’s a lot of requests to do various things. 

As a creator, if you allow yourself to get carried away by these requests, you lose your authenticity and what sets you apart. 

I promised to stay true to myself and share only what I want to share, and what’s authentic to me. So I focus on curating my life in the most exciting, beautiful, and colorful way. And the byproduct of that is that the content I create feels that way. 

I believe authenticity sets you apart. And you can’t do that if you’re bending to the whims of algorithms or patterns or follower requests.”

Rather than try to copy someone else’s style of content, focus on discovering what you like and find valuable, and share that as content for your audience.

If you’re struggling to identify what content to share, research similar creators in your niche and figure out what content they share. The intersection of the content they share, and the extra points/tips/style you have, make the high-quality content you need.

2. Understand your audience

The best way to create high-quality content is to know what your audience wants. What do they talk about? What are they struggling with? What would they like to learn from you? These are good points to help you create valuable content ideas.

To understand what your audience wants;

• Just ask. Leverage poll and Q&A features on social channels like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to ask your audience questions.

Phidelia used this same strategy when trying to find what content her audience loved the most. “I got bored of sharing skincare content and wanted to talk about my other interests in travel, cooking, slow living, and mental health. 

So I put up a poll asking the about 1000 people that followed me at the time if they would be interested in seeing other kinds of content outside of skincare. The responses I received were overwhelmingly positive. I posted my first vlog shortly after, and that was how my page took off,” she explains.

• Go through your comments section to see the questions they are asking and what they will like you to talk about more or explore in detail. Then use that to create more content they’ll love.

• Ask your newsletter list what they think about your content. It can be a short survey or an emoji survey that describes how satisfied they are with your content. But, be careful with this as “people who follow you on the internet just want to consume, so there’s a lot of requests to do various things,” says Phidelia. Focus on the requests that align with your work and value.

• Use research tools like AnswerThePublic or Google Trends to see what people are searching for online.

• Assess the performance of your posts to discover what resonates with your customers the most. Check which ones have more likes, comments, shares, saves, and reposts.

Gather all this information and review them. Look for patterns amongst them and you’ll be able to quickly tell what’s working. Once you identify them, double down on creating content like that.

3. Create to last, rather than to trend

Trends are great for so many reasons, but they don’t provide long-lasting results. If your strategy is to create only trending content, how long will you go on before you run out of content?

Trends are there for a reason, to help you achieve a momentary spike in followers, engagements, or visibility. They don’t provide the long-lasting solution that your business needs to stand out.

Think of the how-to guides that never go out of style or the video processes that people love and save. These content types are everlasting and ever-valuable. Regardless of when or how you share them, people will always find it relevant.

The interesting thing is, they may not go as viral as you’d hoped. But you notice that down the line, maybe 3 to 6 months later, there’s a comment on that post of someone saying how valuable it is.

So, rather than focusing on trends alone, include them as part of your content ideas. For example in a month, you can have 3-4 slots for leveraging trends and creating content pieces from them.

This helps you combine all forms of content to create what your audience really wants.

4. Show the process

The only thing people love more than relevant content is process content. That is content that shows the behind-the-scenes. Customers love learning how a business works or the people behind a brand. In fact, 58% of customers say human communication would increase their likelihood of spending money with a given brand.

It’s the reason you see several contents of people/business owners sharing personal experiences like when they go to the salon, when they visit friends, do something fun, or even what a day in their life looks like.

You too can apply this content strategy in your business by showing the process behind your product. Mitchelle Chibundu, a digital creator and product designer, advises on using behind-the-scene content.

“Share your process with people when you want to release a product. It doesn’t have to be the nitty-gritty of your creative process but use engaging stories to communicate your experience. Let people know this is something that you’re trying out, even if it’s a tweet here and there, and build anticipation in a certain way. I used this strategy for my second book, and it worked like magic.”

Videos, reels, and stories are a great medium for sharing behind-the-scene content, and they don’t have to be of premium quality. It can just be a simple video of you working on the product or a tweet of the time spent on research.

Common behind-the-scene content you can share includes;

• A day in your life as a digital creator and business owner
• How you manufacture your product or how you create ideas for them.
• What a day of having large orders look like and how your team manages it.
• What making a mistake on a customer order looks like and how you manage it.
• Customer reaction when they get your product.

Remember, the aim is to make it as natural as possible and to make people connect with you.

5. Build genuine relationships

It’s “social” media for a reason. Despite the income abilities, job offers, and revenue sharing, the core purpose of social media is to help you build a solid network online. In other words, to build relationships online.

Interact with your audience, respond to their questions, and join the banter/jokes. It’s a great way to start a conversation and build a relationship. You may even go further by registering for their class or webinar or even buying their product.

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It’s a compounding effect that brings many results. People see your expertise and want to invite you for content collaboration. It could be anything from recording a podcast to shooting a video together or writing an ebook that you can sell on Selar.

The content you’ve created becomes extra content to share on your page, more to repurpose, and increased visibility. Bonus point if the person is someone your audience will love to hear from and is a thought leader in their field.

Remember, there’s a thin line between building relationships online and kissing ass. People can smell you being fake from a mile away. So, be as natural as you can be, and freely engage with their content.

The time to start is now

Creating high-quality content can get exhausting, as there’s no known yardstick for valuable content. But it doesn’t have to be so.

Set aside a few hours per week to focus on content and use the tips listed above to create high-quality content your audience wants, you’ll be amazed by the results.

And when you do create content that can be transformed into an ebook or any other digital product, sell it on Selar and receive payments from anyone in the world.