Although social media is all about community, it’s actually gotten harder to reach people as platforms grow more popular. With over 4.5 billions users on social media in 2022, the competition for followers is fierce. So how is a small creator supposed to grow when they’re up against international corporations, celebrities and influencers? The answer is surprisingly simple: impactful content.
In this blog, we’re walking you through the current state of content marketing. We’ll share updates on what works on social media right now, what sort of reach you can expect and how you can make an impact online.
What you need to know about content marketing right now
The world of content marketing is constantly changing. What may have been successful just one year ago would not produce the same engagement results right now. That’s because platforms are constantly introducing new features and updating their algorithms, which govern how content is distributed to users.
Here are a few things influencing content marketing right now.
- Video is king. Since 2018, the amount of time people spend online watching video content has nearly doubled with the average person watching nearly 19 hours of video each week.
- TikTok is changing the industry. Other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter have experimented with short form video in an effort to compete with the fastest growing app of 2020 and 2021.
- Organic reach is on the decline. As video and paid social begin to dominate the social media landscape, it’s tougher to achieve organic growth, especially as a newbie.
Video is one of the most reliable ways to achieve organic growth on social media these days. And it’s not just Instagram and TikTok driving this trend. On LinkedIn, video posts like this one created for our client 20/20 Onsite generate roughly three times as many engagements as plain text posts.
Learn more about how we use video to tell client stories.
How each social media platform stacks
One of the biggest challenges facing marketers today is the decline of organic reach. To reach audiences online, content marketing is essential, and businesses have invested a lot of resources into improving their organic reach.
Meanwhile, platforms have continuously changed what works and what doesn’t. Today, organic reach is tough to achieve. In fact, that’s part of why TikTok has gained so much traction. Unlike the other top social media platforms, organic reach is high on TikTok because the platform exposes content to a wide variety of users.
Here is what the average organic reach looked like last month for the top social media platforms according to Social Status:
Why is it getting harder to reach audiences online?
Social media algorithms naturally favor paid content. They also prioritize posts originating from accounts with a proven track record of engagement. In other words, if you’re a small business or you’re new to social media marketing, the odds are stacked against you.
Without spending money to boost posts or run targeted ad campaigns, you’re going to find it challenging to build a following on social media. Fortunately, it’s not impossible. It just requires a little extra creativity. When the odds are stacked against you, it’s essential to create thought-provoking content. The more engagement you can generate, the greater your organic reach will become. Plus, investing in paid social campaigns can certainly provide a reliable boost.
See how social media giveaways can help you achieve your social media goals.
The impact of digital fatigue
Social media content kept people connected during the height of the pandemic, but output hasn’t slowed down even as life gets back to normal. Now, consumers are growing tired. According to Deloitte, 32% of consumers say they feel overwhelmed by the amount of technology, subscription services and content they interact with regularly.
Audiences are quick to tire, so how often should you post? Although large accounts typically post every day, accounts with fewer than 10,000 followers benefit from posting less frequently. A Hubspot analysis of Facebook accounts found that companies with fewer than 10,000 followers receive higher engagement when they post less frequently.
In fact, their study suggests that accounts with less than 1,000 followers should aim to post 1 to 15 times per month. Rather than filling the calendar with content, your resources may be better spent on improving the quality and relevancy of your content.
How to achieve organic social media growth in a paid social media world
To grow your small social media account, you have a few options. You can invest significantly in your social media content strategy to increase the quantity and quality of posts. Similarly, you can invest in paid social media to reach your intended audience directly. Or you can get back to content basics by focusing on the quality of content first.
What counts as quality content in this day and age? Our team recently attended Content Marketing World, where the industry’s top innovators come together to share ideas and inspiration. During Back to Content Basics, Jill Grozalsky Roberson argues that mastery of the marketing foundations grows even more essential as the social media landscape evolves.
Here are three basic steps to creating successful content.
Know your audience, and speak their language.
What social media platforms do your target customers use most often? How do they want to be spoken to? Are you speaking to a professional audience or a young and casual audience? Answer these questions to determine the voice and tone you develop in your content strategy as well as the social media platforms to prioritize.
Anticipate their content needs.
What does your target audience want to see? What can they learn from you? How can you entertain them? If you’re not creating content that responds to the wants and needs of your target audience, then they simply won’t engage. The content creation process is much like the sales process. To win their attention, you need to offer something of benefit, whether that’s knowledge, incentives or entertainment.
Play by the rules of the platform.
To achieve growth on any platform, you need to feed the algorithm. That means using their exclusive features, interacting with other accounts and more. For instance, did you know Instagram feed posts with human faces perform better than those without? Focus on a couple platforms where you’re most likely to reach your target audience, and get to know their unique algorithms. Then, create content that fulfills the needs of the platform – and your audience.
This video created for our client TalkingTree Creative demonstrates the difference it makes when you play by a platform’s rules. Simply by using the audio Instagram provides users for Reels, we broke 9,000 views. Other clips posted without using Instagram’s audio features garnered views in the hundreds.
Create impactful marketing content.
When you’re up against paid campaigns and companies with entire marketing teams, you need to get creative to achieve organic growth. Our content marketers can help you identify the best platforms for your business and design a content strategy that feeds the algorithm and converts followers into customers.
