The saying Content is King has been floating around for almost as long as social media has been revered as a direct to consumer channel by businesses small and large.

Content represents the ultimate opportunity to level the playing field, virality does not respect the size or budget of the content creator, and the attribute of appeal should definitely not be overlooked in terms of content creation strategy.

Strategize

If you are thinking of appeal, it might be a good idea not to think of it in a “This product will appeal to our customers and we should focus on it” mindset, because unless your product is pretty life-changing (like a machine that turns metal into gold) then it might not really get shared by your audience to their peers.

The creation of content should always be aimed squarely at putting enough value into something to make it worth peer-to-peer sharing by your audience, accessing that super-huge network of friends of your followers, particularly if your followers are trendsetters or influencers. You can tailor content to achieve this aim, by combining solid analytics for examples and identifying key features of your followers, you can create content that is targeted at a specific segment.

When coming up with your content creation strategy some of the questions you should be considering will include:

* What type of content you want to post on each social media channel?

* The frequency of your posting?

* Target audience for each channel & type of post?

* How to integrate paid advertising with content?

* The best times to schedule the postings on each channel to maximize impressions?

Once you’ve done that you will need to come up with a Content Calendar to divvy out the responsibilities of creating the content, but also consider your online traffic’s eco-system, do you really want to put resources into content that you will be sharing on a social media channel for example? Or would you rather attract a greater proportion of this traffic to your website where you can maximize pageviews, visits & if applicable, revenue?

The balance of these factors is what will determine your strategy.