How to Create Social Media Content for Small Businesses

The digital space is highly populated. More and more people are signing up on social media networks like Instagram, Twitter, TikTok—you name it.

As a small business owner, you need to know how to create content that stands out.

Today, you’ll learn the secret to creating social media content that resonates with your audience. Let's dive in!

Know your target audience

To create social media content that speaks to your ideal customer, you first need to identify your target audience. Typically, this will depend on the purpose of your business and the types of products or services you offer. For instance, if you run an online pet shop, your ideal customers may include people who own pets, love pets, or work with pets.

Once you've identified your ideal customer, the next step is to take note of their interests and preferences. This will help you create content that resonates with them.

Important things to know about your target audience include:

• Their age
• Gender
• Location
• Occupation

Now, how do you get all this information? You can send surveys to your existing customers to collect data. A simple Google form with the relevant questions will work. Just make the document shareable by email. You may even use a barcode your recipients can just scan to access your survey.

Once you have all these customer details, create a buyer persona, like the one below:

Your customer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. You’ll use it as your guide when creating social media content.

Define your brand voice and style

Your brand voice is the way you communicate with your target audience. It can either be formal or informal, serious or playful, and so on. Your brand style, on the other hand, is made up of the visual components of your brand like your logo, typeface, color palette, and overall design aesthetic. In other words, this is the look and feel of your business.

Your brand voice and style make up your entire brand personality. A strong brand personality will help you form a deep connection with potential customers. It will allow you to have a memorable relationship with your social media audience.

So, to effectively define your brand voice and style, you must first determine how you want to be perceived by your audience.

It’s not advisable to randomly pick a brand voice or style. Instead, work with something that matches the nature of your services.

For example, Zulily offers goods that include a variety of toys. So, Zulily went for a fun and welcoming brand personality. You can see this in their social media content.

Additionally, you must ensure that your tone and style are consistent across multiple social platforms and even in your email campaigns. This way, people can easily recognize your brand and connect with it on multiple channels.

Choose the right social media platforms

You need to choose your social platforms carefully. The goal is to go where your customer is. So, the best platforms for you will depend on the type of business you run. Is it a B2B (Business-to-Business), or a B2C (Business-to-Customer)?

B2B brands will want to use platforms that will help you connect with top decision-makers in target companies. So, think about platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter. For B2C brands, platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook can help you connect in a more relaxed way with your audience.

It’s also important to consider the social media platform your target audience uses. Go back to your audience persona. Are they primarily using Instagram or are they more active on Twitter?

Age is typically a factor here. For instance, Gen Z and Millennials (age 12-34) will usually be on platforms like TikTok. Older social media users, meanwhile, are likely to gravitate towards platforms like Facebook.

Also, consider the type of content your audience is more likely to engage with. You can, again, check out your customer persona for this. For an audience that prefers visual content, Instagram, Pinterest, or YouTube are recommended. If your audience prefers short, concise updates, then Twitter should be your social platform.

Develop a content strategy

As a small business owner, you want to create social media content that brings prospects closer to you. This means showing up with the right message at the right time.

You can only achieve this with a well-organized content strategy.

When defining your content types, consider what will help you achieve your social media objectives. These objectives could be to inform or entertain, among others. For instance, if the goal is to inform, you’d think about infographics or insightful carousel posts like Ceros’ below.

Since you can have multiple social media objectives, it follows you can have different types of social media content, too. Here are other types of posts you can include in your content strategy based on your social media objectives:

• To entertain: Instagram Reels, Stories, TikTok videos
• To inform: graphs, LinkedIn Pulse articles
• To engage: polls, quizzes

Once you’ve determined the types of content to publish, determine each piece of content’s topic.

If you run out of content ideas, you can use a generative AI tool like Writer to help you. A simple prompt will give you something tangible to work with:

After sorting everything out, it’s time to create a content calendar. You want to plan the publication of your social media posts.

Although research has shown that the best times to post are from 6 PM to 9 PM and noon to 3 PM, you want to check what your own social media analytics tells you. Make sure this data gets reflected in your social media content calendar.

Here are other key details your calendar should have:

• Content format (image, video, text?)
• Content copy
• Metrics to track (we’ll talk more about this later)

You can use a spreadsheet like the one below as your calendar.

This, however, can be time consuming. Tools like Buffer or Later come with automated features you might want to take advantage of.

Create Content

At this point, all you need to do is follow your content calendar.

Start creating the different types of content specified in your plan. You’ll want to begin with the content you want published soon.

Always use high-quality images and videos. Don’t worry. You don’t need expensive equipment for these. In general, you just need to know what visual elements to highlight when taking pictures or videos for your social media channels.

Check out these examples from Butterfly Loft Salon, a hair salon based in Los Angeles:

The salon highlights its different hairstyles on Instagram posts.

Your social captions should also be well written. Use language that an average user can easily understand. For promotional content, always include a clear call to action.

You can use project management software in your content creation process. This will help ensure your content team members—from the writers to the graphic artists—know the tasks they need to complete and their corresponding deadlines.

Measure your success

You need to measure your content performance on social media. This is a key component of social media content creation. When you know what people like based on their interactions with your existing content, you’ll know what types of posts to produce subsequently. In other words, measuring your success can help you improve your social media content strategy over time.

Examples of key metrics you can track with your social media platform’s analytics include:

• Impressions
• Engagement
• Reach
• Website clicks

The social media metrics you focus on should be based on your social media goals. So, if you aim to boost engagement, for instance, you can track metrics like comments, shares, and likes.

Adjust your social media strategy based on your data. Experiment with new content types and strategies to keep your social media presence fresh and engaging.

BONUS TIP: Engage with your audience

It's not enough to simply post content. You also need to engage your audience. This won’t just help you get more Instagram followers, Facebook likes, or retweets. It can also help you reach your ultimate goal with your content: to build relationships with your audience and increase your chances of converting them into paying customers.

One way to effectively engage with your audience is to respond to their comments on your posts. Running a social media contest or giveaway is another great tactic for boosting engagement. You can even use your social platform for customer service. Check out what Moo does below:

In these cases, you should respond to comments on time. Around 76% of customers expect you to respond within 24 hours.

Building relationships with your audience will help you establish a loyal following and generate more engagement over time.

Conclusion

Creating social content for your small business requires a thoughtful approach. The content should align with your brand and speak directly to your target audience.

To recap, here are some key steps to creating social media content for your small business— know your target audience, define your brand voice and style, choose the right social media channels, and develop an effective content strategy. Finally, create your content and then measure its performance.

With these steps, you can create social media content that drives engagement and long-term success.