7 Tips for Creating a Successful Strategy for your Social Media Content

Social Media can feel overwhelming, especially for small business owners who want to spend their time actually producing their service or product rather than spending all of their time marketing it!

We understand that especially in the equestrian world, people are too busy to waste time floundering online without a clear plan. Follow these tips to get organised with your social media content and make your digital presence impressive without taking up too much of your precious time!

1. Pick your Platforms

Choosing to focus on a few select platforms that your audience are most engaged with, and spend most of their time online on, is a great way to optimise the time you spend marketing your business on social media.

If your ideal client is checking Instagram every hour (we are definitely guilty of this!) then you should be putting way more effort into your Instagram profile than say, your Twitter presence!

Even if this means narrowing down your efforts to just one platform to begin with, it is more effective to produce great content that garners an engaged audience on one platform, than mediocre on five.

2. Identify your Ideal Client

Once you have narrowed down where to post, you need to work out what to post. The easiest way to do this is to work out who your ideal client is and what they want to see, learn and hear about. This way you're not wasting time appealing to a wider audience, the majority of whom will never turn into actual customers.

First, write down who your ideal client is, then compose a list of things they'd like to see in their feed. For example, if your ideal client was a rider, they might want to see exercise or nutrition tips for their horses along with your marketing content.

3. Format your Content for Skim Reading

There is nothing more unappealing when scrolling through a social media platform than a wall of text. You have seconds to hook in your audience when they are scrolling to make them stop and pay attention to your post so they need to be eye-catching!

Photos should be high-quality and eye-catching, captions and text should be to the point and structured using headers, numbered lists or perhaps even with emojis as bullet points if this fits your brand aesthetic!

4. Hook your Audience in with Freebies

Content like infographics are great for sharing on predominantly visual mediums like Instagram and Pinterest, they are images that contain information as well as pictures of illustrations. They are easy to create using services like Canva, all you need is the expertise that will be helpful in infographic form.

Tips in the caption of your social media posts are always welcomed by an audience, being genuinely helpful on social media makes you much more likely to gain a loyal following who will be invested in your brand and therefore more likely to convert into customers when you offer them products or services.

5. Plan your Content in Advance Batches

Setting aside time to plan social media posts, captions and content will save you time and increase the quality of what you're posting. Because you aren't swapping from task to task and winging it every time you post, your social media will start to feel much more manageable, rather than something you have to panic about every few days and scrabble to update.

6. Reuse Content

To get the most out of the time you spend writing things like blog posts and PDF resources, turn them into captions for social media, Pinterest graphics and email content. This will save you time and it will increase the chance that people will see the content you've put lots of effort into creating!

7. Utilise Trending Topics

Keeping up to date with the industry news in your sector is vital as a business owner anyway but it's not to be overlooked in terms of content for your social media either.

Creating content based around industry news helps you to have things to talk about on your social media when you're feeling a little low on inspiration but it also means you can ride the wave of trending topics to increase your exposure. Make your content worth your audience's time by having a unique perspective or creating something new that still relates to the topic.

EQuerry Consulting now have availability for a limited number of new clients to sign up to our popular monthly social media management services. You can drop us an email on info@equerryconsulting.co.uk or through the contact form on our website to learn more.