How to Create Strategic Social Content [Easy and Fun to Do!]

So, you want to start creating content, but you have no idea where to start or what to do. Well, you came to the right place! I will be teaching you the basics to creating a strategic social content plan and what you should and shouldn't do with your content.

What are My Goals?

You may already have your reason as to why you want to make content, but just in case, ask yourself, "What is it that you want from social media anyways?" Are you doing it because you are obligated to, or are you just doing it for fun like I do with my YouTube channel? For me, I feel like some people don't have a clear thought in mind on what they really want to make content on and they are just doing it because they feel like they have a responsibility to. Most of the time, however, I can tell that most people keep on doing what they love doing because it's fun! To reiterate again, make sure that whatever you're doing, only do it if you believe that you will have a blast doing it again and again!

Who is My Audience?

Once you figure out your goals that you came up with for your content, you need to figure out who your target audience is going to be. According to SproutSocial, only 55% of marketers, that's us, use social media data so that we can understand our target audience better. It might seem like a long and tedious thing to do, but in the long run it will definitely pay off because you will have a better idea as to what your audience pays attention to more and which types of social media platforms to use more than the others.

What are Metrics and How Do I Use Them?

Right now, you're probably wondering what I mean by metrics and what use you have for using them. It's relatively easy to figure out. Basically, you're paying attention to your content's reach, clicks, engagement, and hashtag performance. Reach is the amount of people that actually saw your content. Clicks are the number of clicks on your content itself. Engagement is the number of interactions with your content divided by the number of impressions. It's also a better way of seeing how your audience sees you and if they want to interact with your content.

Choosing My Content

There are many different types of content you can create to catch many different people's attention. There are blog posts, GIF images, photos, video clips, full videos, infographics, and many more. Currently, the most popular type of content that is out there is videos. According to HubSpot, 82% of internet video traffic currently makes up that much of the total consumer internet traffic this year. I'm not saying you can't make content with anything else other than video, but it might not get as much traffic as you would have originally liked. All in all, stick to making the type of content that you believe will work the best with your image in mind.

Timing is Everything!

The time of day and the day of the week are really important in figuring out when your target audience is online and using the internet the most. When you post your content online, you need to be ready to engage with your audience, so if you were to choose to upload content late at night, not only would that not be a very good time to post said content, but nobody would be ready to respond to anything either. The other thing you need to remember to do is if someone responds back to your online content, you need to respond back ASAP. Otherwise, they possibly won't believe that you are the best at what you do.

What's Next?

Now that you have figured out all of the previous sections I mentioned above, now is the time to look at what content is working, what content is not working, and lastly, how you will try to improve on what you can do better. This mainly wraps around your content that is performing very well and making any needed adjustments to other parts of your content that you know you could do better on or the content that didn't do so well , but you now know what you need to do to make it work and make it even better!

Thank you so much for reading this post, everyone! I hope this all helps you in figuring out what type of content you want to make and also how and where you're going to post it online.

What is A/B Testing and How Does it Help? [A/B Testing for YouTube Thumbnails]

A/B Testing

A/B testing, by my definition, is where you are trying to advertise one thing, but are showcasing it two different ways, and figuring out which way of advertising brings in the bigger audience over the other.

This helps in a big way because you may like sticking to one way of advertising something because that is always the way you have been doing things or it may just be because you like how it looks. In this instance, that's not always the case. Sometimes, different visuals appeal to the audience in different ways than one might think. For instance, I have been making YouTube videos now for almost 10 years and I've never stopped doing it because it is fun and exciting! There have been some times where I can't choose a thumbnail and I will end up having two different versions that I like, but can't choose by myself.

TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy, which is a great source to use on YouTube, gives some more insight into what you should look out for when doing an A/B test. One important thing to note that they mention is that even if you do an A/B test with the same video and different thumbnails, you will definitely get different results every time because every person is active different times of the day and different days of the week which will change your results a lot.

So, when making a YouTube thumbnail, each part of the uploaded video gets put into consideration: The title of the video, the description you added that most of the time describes what the video is about, and the tags. By tags, I mean short terms that a person searches for on the search bar in YouTube that helps them to find your videos.

Take into consideration, if you were a YouTuber that makes videos that are focused towards younger kids, you would want to make the thumbnails colorful and have the cartoon characters they love somewhere on the thumbnails too. If you were to make a different thumbnail that did not have anything at all that kids liked on it, and it was black and white, there is no way that they would want to click on a thumbnail that didn't make them happy.

You may have thought that I forgot to mention how A/B testing helps. Well, don't worry, that's where I'm getting to right now.

 

How Does This All Help?

The way A/B testing helps, whether it is for digital marketing advertisements on websites or if it is for comparing how different thumbnails bring in different audiences on your YouTube channel's videos, they both basically are doing the same thing. They are comparing CTRs. A CTR is short for click-through-rate and that is determined by how many people out there see your ad and click it because they want to learn more about your advertisement. CTRs are the most basic thing A/B tests start analyzing. The next thing they look for is where and when your audience is clicking your ad from. Every person, as I said before, is active during different times and days of the week, so the results will still differ every time. Say, if your main audience on YouTube watches your videos mostly on Friday nights at 5:00 PM CT, then that's when you would want to upload your videos because if you were to upload your videos any other time of the day or on a different day, even with the thumbnail that would have grabbed their attention, it won't bring in as many people because they are not expecting you to release anything on a different time schedule than what you have already planned.

Lastly, I know I have not mentioned this at all yet, but the last thing that gets put into consideration is the different traffic sources that your advertisements get put on. Not only do my YouTube videos send out notifications to my subscribers that I uploaded a video, but it also sends out a tweet to my Twitter too for anybody that follows me on there so they will also know I just uploaded new content. Continuing the A/B test through different sources, you will still get different results because your audience won't know what to think right away since they usually know how your thumbnails are designed and if they look different from usual, there will be less CTRs.

If you take all of these considerations into mind, then you will be able to successfully create an advertisement (or YouTube thumbnail) that will appeal to your audience the way you want.