Love it or hate it, social media plays a key role in building an online presence these days. As a social media content creator, you rely on the tools and algorithms of different platforms to reach and grow your audience.

Creating and maintaining a social media presence is more critical now that the competition is growing; more than 50 million people worldwide consider themselves creators, despite the creator economy emerging only about a decade ago. The key to success in brand partnerships is maintaining digital relevance. 

Here are the eight social media strategies that you can use to great excellent content both in your brand partnerships and to get your profiles on new brands’ radars:

1. Create an Authentic, Community-Driven Content Strategy

After finding a niche, you need to build a content strategy that educates, entertains, and/or inspires your followers. As an influencer, you need to develop relevant, high-quality content that shows you’re an expert in your niche, while also conveying how that relates to your day-to-day life. 

Consumers expect authenticity from creators they trust and idolize on social media. Don’t overproduce your content; instead, maintain your aesthetic and style while being honest and open with your followers. Always make space for your audience to engage with your content, whether that means hosting a livestream or asking questions in your Instagram captions. Successful content creators also interact with other users’ posts in their communities to show a dedication to their followers.

This advice can be applied to content you create on your own as well as content you’re producing and sharing for a potential brand partnership. While larger brands especially will have specific guidelines for campaigns with creators, don’t sign up for a partnership that totally restricts your creativity. 

Makeup influencer @makeupbystacie showcases her cosmetics skills both on herself and on clients from her online community, tagging the products that help her create each look.

The power of influencers, content creators, and brand ambassadors comes from the trust they build with followers, and this can be undermined if your content appears fake or overly branded.

2. Get to Know Your Audience

As a content creator, knowing your audience is one of the daunting tasks you might have. To create posts that resonate with your audience, you should know who’s going to be most interested in interacting with your content. 

You can start with a specific demographic and then dig deeper. Know their motivations, social activities, etc. This allows you to create posts that your audience deeply cares about. Consider taking advantage of creator analytics available to you on social platforms like Instagram to understand who’s viewing your content and what kind of posts are resonating best with your audience.

In addition to analytics, you can check out what other content creators in your niche are doing on social media to connect with their online audiences and learn more about them.  

3. Adapt Content to Each Platform

One of the most common misconceptions about social media is that you have to run the same post on all platforms as it helps you save time and gives you the same outcome. While recycling content to get the most out of each post you share can be valuable and efficient, you may need to tweak your content to fit different apps’ styles, tones, and algorithms.

Take Instagram and TikTok, for example. While a longer-form video may perform better as an IGTV post or in a Story highlight, you may want to shorten that content when sharing on TikTok to quickly get users’ attention and stand out on the “For You” page.

When it comes to brand partnerships, take initiative by exploring what content and platforms perform best with that brand’s target audience, and think about how you can weave your own voice and style into a post that aligns with their values.

While @emsalwaysreading primarily shares her favorite books with Instagram followers, she’s able to naturally weave a Mapiful product into her Instagram Reel by inspiring her audience to create a “cozy reading corner.” 

4. Post Consistently, But Don’t Spam

Sometimes, creating high-quality content isn’t enough. You need to create content consistently. That’s because consistency increases your audience’s recall value. They’ll remember you more if you send them regular updates, satisfying their curiosity. 

Also, if you don’t create content consistently, your audience will unfollow you or forget about you. Establishing yourself in the industry is a process that takes time. However, this doesn’t mean you should post content every hour of the day, or even every day. 

Learn when your audience is most active by analyzing your previous successful posts and determining the best time to post on TikTok, for example.

If you’re partnering with a brand, try to naturally share sponsored content sandwiched by other original posts to avoid looking inauthentic and sales-oriented.

5. Collaborate with Other Content Creators

Not every social media content creator in your niche is a competitor; in fact, most successful influencers and creators tend to collaborate with other users to reach a wider audience. 

Visit the social media channels of other influencers, interact with them by leaving comments on their page, or share their content. It is one of the best ways to build rapport with other influencers in your niche. If you do this right, you can also bring a significant audience base to your channel and get fantastic results. 

Influencer @marjanne.co takes advantage of Instagram’s collab feature to share posts with other influencers on both creators’ profiles.

Building relationships with other content creators increases your professional network, and paves the way for them to shout out your posts and drive even more impressions.

Moreover, collaborating with various content creators is crucial for exposing your content to prospective brands and making it more engaging. When you do cross-promotions and consistent mentions of relevant accounts, followers will be more likely to engage with your content, and brands are more likely to come across your profile. 

6. Add Value to Users' Lives

Although informative content is always good, your readers and clients still have to feel that they can gain some benefit from what you publish. 

One of the main goals of content is to solve a follower’s problems and find ways to overcome them. So creating content that offers an added benefit to users' lives not only builds brand loyalty but will also keep them coming back for more. 

As long as you create genuinely helpful content for your audience, then there's no doubt it gets passed around. 

Even through sponsored posts featuring a variety of brands, fitness creators like @_ang.rutherford_ inspire followers to live their healthiest lives with products they love.

You can sprinkle in relevant offers and customized deals for your social media audience in between the content you publish as well. Just make sure that the offers you provide remain relevant to them.

7. Add Social Media Content to Community Emails

Just because you’re a social media content creator doesn’t mean your content has to stop there! If you’re not already using email to connect with a wider fanbase, or if you are, explore how you can integrate your social media content into emails you share with your community.

Don’t forget that while Facebook posts reach their audience in only 2% of cases, emails reach people with a probability of 90% (provided you warm up your email account and don’t have issues with email deliverability). With these numbers in mind, not using social media and email combo seems like a crime. 

With Pixlee TurnTo, brands often incorporate content from influencers and community members into their emails. This is a strategy social media content creators can also utilize to broaden the reach of your content.

Email marketing allows segmenting your list of contacts and sending them highly personalized messages that won’t look irrelevant and annoying. So, whenever you post a piece of your astounding content on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, think of how you can communicate it to your audience via email.

Social media is an ever-changing landscape, and having some background knowledge on how you can present your content to those that will engage with it the most is key. It's about you. You are talking to your audience and then laying out the foundations for creating a solid, visual personal brand and a fluent tone of voice for your content.