11 Oct The 6 C’s of Creating Contagious Content

Good stories give big voices to small ventures. 

What makes good social content? How do I get more fans and better interactions? These are the questions we get asked all the time…

Essentially, social optimisation comes down to:

Creative communications

This includes great design, intriguing communication, disruption or impact.

Engaging content

Enticing people to interact with your brand is essential. The aim is to get your audience to become clients and your clients to become brand advocates.

Story telling

Build a narrative that people can believe in and follow.

Don’t ignore the Edgerank points

Facebook’s latest Edgerank Algorithm forces original creative & engaging content. And there is not doubt all the other social channels follow a similar algorithm.

The 6 C’s – Creative Content Creation

Construct

Build a narrative for your product, service and brand. Buying decisions are often based on emotional drivers. People aren’t often driven or enticed by rational features. Building the heart and soul of your business is important to achieve a personal human-to-human connection. Authenticity, is the difference between mass marketing, trying to appeal to everyone but in fact, influencing no-one. By curating and creating an authentic brand story, you indirectly invite your audience to become a part of that story and in turn, share your vision with them and therefore, they connect, because you have given them something to care about.

Clarity

It’s important to be absolutely clear about why you exist. What’s your brand purpose? What products or services do you offer? What benefit do you provide?

There’s one thing every brand should know. Itself. All your content is a direct reflection on your brand, it’s culture, identity and ethics, and thus, one needs to have a clear understanding of the true heart of your organisation, and all content should act in congruence with this.

Credibility

“Brand credibility is often pointed out by marketing experts as one psychological factor that could trigger the buying impulse of consumers.”

Establishing credibility is not a once-off process. Maintaining, enhancing and nourishing consumer perceptions is key. By keeping your posts aligned with your organisation’s/ /brands values and highlighting business competence (ie: testimonials) you are able to slowly manage these perceptions and thus, build credibility. Longevity also places a  pivotal role, as, naturally, the longer the organisation has been successfully operating, the more credibility is built – including this in your brand story and tactfully sliding it in to your content is never a bad idea.

Community

Building an online community is one of the most important steps. Due to Facebook’s algorithm, users are more inclined to see content posted by friends, as opposed to publishers. Facebook has focused their gaze on meaningful interactions and posts that spark conversation in order to deliver more relevant content to the user. Using Facebooks’ Inventory, signals, predictions and score, Facebook determines how relevant content is to your brands’ audience. Therefore it’s important to know your audience and build a community based on these interests and demographics so the content you create is relevant, and thus piques ‘the algorithms’ interest.

Call to Action

Research shows that more than 80% of people who see your content generally won’t interact unless you have a call to action. The goal is to prompt your target audience to focus their attention on the next action you want them to take.

Consistency

Content needs to be consistent. Not only do you need to capture your audiences’ attention, you need to keep it. Thanks to technological advancements we are able to see the best time of the day that we should post in order to achieve optimum reach and engagement, we are able to tell the interests and behaviours of those who are interested in our brand, so it’s up to us to not only keep content aligned with the brand’s value proposition but keep it consistent in order to stay “top of mind.”

The aim is to transition from piquing their interest, to creating emotional investment and building credibility.

Frequency of Posts by a Page

How many times a day should I post to stay “top of mind?’
Various studies have been done in order to answer this very question. The amount of times a brand should post depends on the brand itself and the social platform, however, studies indicate the below:

Instagram: 1-2 times per day
LinkedIn: 1 post per day
Facebook: 1 post per day
Pinterest: Up to 11 pins daily – it is advisable to re-share other pins and not just share your own pins.
Twitter: 15 Tweets daily – most retweets occur within 1 hour after tweeting, therefore a higher daily frequency is best.
This guide excludes “Stories”.
Stories fit into the “TV” category: where there are no limits (yet). We’ll cover the theory and algorithm of compelling Stories in a separate article.

Pages start with 0.1% fan reach

Facebook announced that users only see 2% of their friends posts (the algorithm favours people and content you engage with most). Brands have to fit within this small percentage. Brands start at 0.1% of their fans seeing their posts. The best time of the day to post needs to be considered, as traditional thinking was to post when people are most active. However, brand will then find themselves competing with all the ‘friends’ posts. Engaging content that follows ‘the 6 C’s’ may only trend much later organically. The Facebook “Relevance” score will give you an indication if the content will reach further than 5% of your fans.

Our specialised team of Social Media guru’s make use of innovative and informative software in order to not only schedule social posts across various platforms, but successfully track the activity of these posts; providing us with useful insight for future content, and resulting in successful performance.