In a post-pandemic online world, content strategy has become the new biggest concern for smart marketers. With more social media users than ever before, company leaders are quickly learning that their audience is scattered amongst a multitude of digital platforms and environments.
However, perfecting a content strategy isn’t just simply having a presence on these platforms, it’s adapting your tactics to adhere to each platform’s individual algorithm and most importantly the platform’s prime demographic.
If you’re on a mission to shake up that content strategy and start seeing both wider engagement and demographic success, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to find out more about a new content strategy that will transform your feeds for ultimate post-pandemic victory.
Why Has Content Become So Important Post-Pandemic?
The pandemic significantly changed the world as we once knew it, so it’s no surprise that it has shifted the world of marketing too. As more consumers turned to digital activities during the lockdowns across the globe, it’s no surprise that a window for a new age of online marketing has opened up to e-commerce competitors.
(Image Source: Datareportal)
As you can see here, at the height of the 2020 pandemic, 43% of people were spending longer on social media platforms, rendering them a prime target for marketers who were relying on an online audience for success.
This is where we reached the need for paid social and content strategy change. With more consumers online, brought a larger scale of e-commerce businesses competing for conversions. Therefore, it was more important than ever before to stand out amongst the crowd and re-jig those stagnant tactics.
This is where the 80/20 method comes into play. While in theory, this form of content strategy has been around for years, it toom the pandemic for smart marketers to realize that using socials to promote their products would do entirely the opposite, often falling lost in a sea of other promotional competitors.
So What Is The 80/20 Strategy?
The 80/20 strategy applies to the type of content we are posting and how we post it. Simply, it suggests that only 20% of content should be promotional, while the other 80% should educate, inform and entertain.
(Image Source: Brand Muscle)
As you can see here, the largest motivations for using social media surround forms of entertainment, networking, and boredom. Most consumers of social content are not there to research/find products to buy and are therefore much more likely to disregard sales-based promotional content.
The 80/20 strategy encourages marketers to play to their demographic trends in order to gain more engagement with their content and in turn a stronger, more dedicated following. Minimizing the amount of promotional content on your page will not only increase trustworthiness and assert your true brand values, but your customers are twice as likely to repurchase from your e-commerce site.
(Image Source: Sprout Social)
On the other side, you can see that too much ad posting can decrease your following and in turn sales conversion. As shown above, you can see that 45% of brand followers unfollow when a brand’s feed is too promotional. This is the second-highest cause of disengagement, proving why it’s time to put the 80/20 rule into action.
How to Apply The 80/20 Rule To Your Business
Applying the 80/20 rule to your social strategy has never been easier, you just have to get creative! Producing organic, witty content that represents your brand values in a non-promotional way is the key to a good content strategy.
Here are some of the easiest ways to produce educating, informative and entertaining content:
Newsjacking
Increasing engagement is all about breaking away from the crowd and jumping on top of a trend before it strikes. Newsjacking is a perfect way to do this, allowing smart marketers to turn trending topics into viral content that encapsulates both a topical story and their own brand values.
(Image Source: Newsjacking)
Newsjacking is all about taking a topical story in the news and finding a way to make it relate to your brand in either an entertaining or informational way. Producing content that surrounds a trending topic will send it to the top of your demographic’s feeds as they search for more information relating to that topic.
Better still, if you incorporate a viral hashtag alongside the post, you’ll see more engagement and conversation surrounding both the topical story and how your brand has reacted.
Before you know it, you’re involved within the story, hitting headlines and hopefully going viral. This is one of the easiest ways to gain a quick burst in followers and unpaid promotion for your brand.
Stand Up for Sustainability
Gen Z currently controls the online social sphere, therefore they control a great deal of the trends, content values, and ‘cancel culture’. As a generation with a growing number of eco-conscious followers, sustainability has never been more important to a demographic.
(Image Source: Hero)
As you can see here, both Gen Z and Millenials are 60% more likely to engage with your brand if you show support for the causes they care about.
Why not ramp up your own sustainability and start incorporating it into your brand values and content strategy. Create content surrounding the ‘behind the scenes’ of your production process or simply about a cause you strive to help with your profits. Maintaining a good level of transparency and ethical responsibility within your content is the key to acing the educate, entertain and inform rule that the 80/20 strategy follows.
Know Your Demographic
Knowing your demographic may just be the key to securing that last piece of the content strategy. While creating unique content alone may not see your engagement soaring, knowing who to target it to certainly will.
We suggest that you take a step back and take an audit of your audience analytics. Not only will this help you gain a clearer view of your consumer behaviour, interests and perfect customer profiles, but it will also aid your content creation too.
Taking an audit of your socials and taking time to social listen will help you discover which forms of content are performing the best and which ones are not performing so well. 
(Image Source: Finteza)
Using platforms such as Finteza, Google Analytics and Google Trends, you can track your demographic trends and your social engagement, all while getting a solid profile of your general audience. Therefore, depending on the generation and behaviour of your particular consumer niche, you can efficiently target your content to the platforms they visit most.
Ready To Revamp That Content Game?
If you think the 80/20 method could be the key to your content success, then there has never been a better time to start. With more e-commerce competitors on the market than ever before, keeping a consistent and effective content strategy in place will set you on top.
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