How To Create Content For Social Media?
Content is king; an expression as old as the road to Rome. With the rise of the internet this expression took on a different meaning. A well designed website is a “nice to have” but what’s more important is the content it shows. The content draws visitor to the site and makes the site easier to find through search engines. A brand used to have just a website; a couple of pages to fill with content which would stay the same for a couple of years. And now social media is messing everything up, there are multiple channels which have to be continuously provided with new and interesting new content.
Mentos has been provided with a way to produce content by the public and is exploiting it in a very successful way.How can a brand create content to keep the visitors coming and keep on interacting with the brand?
The monologue of the olden days was easy for brands but a dialogue takes more time and effort. There are several ways to keep the dialogue going and provide the visitors constantly with fact, figures, pictures and funny movies.
But before you start twittering away, you have to know what your goal is; what are the brands objectives? Once you know what your objective are you have to examine which social media channel match these objectives and how often you want to “feed” these channels.
It is from at most importance there is one employee in your company responsible for (creating and) monitoring the content and who looks after the objectives. But the main question for most companies is; how do we create a constant stream of content?
There are several ways to obtain the much needed content:
1. Do it yourself
A company can do it themselves. But this means the brand needs to have enough manpower, funds and creativity in-house. O’Neill is a good example
2. Hire people
This option is easier and less time consuming for a company. But who to hire? You can hire professionals like bloggers, designers, photographers and / or movie directors (orchestrated by a social media agency) to provide a constant stream of content. Or you can hire consumers who can write the content for you.
3. UGC
Brands can challenge or open up to users and let them play or interact with the brand, this way the consumer produces content for the brand. It sounds like an easy option but putting it in practice is harder one might think. Consumers might think; “what’s in it for me” or they will take the opportunity to talk trash about your brand. But if you do it right you can even get your consumers to design products for you.
So think and plan before you start twittering or give us a call. 
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Most brands immediately react like this: aaargh, but we do not have content.
Mostly its pretty easy when having the right agency and user created / rated content can do the rest.
Content still king indeed!
[...] if you create something this good people will keep on talking about it. And as I’ve said in a previous posting this viral proves the point; Content Is [...]
@inspire_london How To Create Content For Social Media? Simple – great content. Or is there more to it? http://tinyurl.com/33tsh9b