Creating Social Media Content II

Social Media provide effective tools to create a dialogue with people. The impact of our Social Media Marketing will be determined by our content. Many sites where I have been reading about content creation, recommend me to be interesting, engaging and entertaining. That might feel a bit intimidating… However, don't fear. There are methods for everything and so for content creation. I have done some screening and here are some tips of how we can create interesting, engaging and entertaining content in the performing arts sector. 


Be interesting
The secret of being interesting is to really know the community that will take part of our content. Since the readers share, recommend, tag, comment on the content, they automatically become co-creators of the content, and only what they find interesting will be widely spread and further developed. In the post Creating Social Media Content I, I wrote about "buying personas". To list the characteristics of our different "buyers" can help us map out their "buying personas" and show us what kind of information different target group wants and how we can create an interesting dialogue.

Be engaging
When we feel that we know what content to create and how to address our different buyer personas, we must publish so that it engages them. This is done by publishing at the right time in the right place. Some sites recommend thinking like a real publisher and making a content calendar. A content calendar is a plan of what content should be written by whom, and when and where it should be distributed. The content calendar is made side by side to the general organization calendar to be able to interact with all other events.

Be entertaining
Content is everything that can be published on the web. I am more of a text person so I tend to think 'text' when I see the word 'content'. This is the biggest mistake we can make in Social Media marketing, so if you're like me, change now! The new media marketing consultant Paul Colligan recommend us to really embrace 2.0 (definition of web 2.0) and give information to people the way they want it. This opens for a lot of possibilities for the performing arts sector: How do journalists want to assist a press conference? Can we create theater webinars beside theater seminars? Can the theater archive be extended to include videos published at youtube? What can we podcast a series of new written plays? Can we make audience interviews during the interval and publish on our sites? Etc, etc. All you have to do is to make the content once, and then it will get diffused. 


    Content Creation Plan

• Make Buyer Personas for your target groups
• Create accounts in different social media, make friends, comment and learn from experience what kind of information that gets attention from your buyer personas.
• Make a Content Calendar: Who writes what, and where and when will it be published?
• Explore and have fun with 2.0: Content is not just text but image, video, audio, podcast etc etc.