Most marketers use their social media content strategy to achieve one of two goals. On the one hand, 58% of marketers employ social media content to raise brand awareness. And on the other, 41% use social networks to increase community engagement.

A well-thought-out social media marketing strategy can have substantially more far-reaching effects than those experienced on distribution channels, and both of these main objectives support any brand’s overarching goal of increasing revenue.

Considering that 53.2% of young consumers go on social media to research brands (compared to the 51.3% who use search engines for the same purpose), it is easy to conclude that next-level social media content doesn't just have the ability to engage. Much more importantly, it can be a robust conversion tool with impressive potential for accelerating business growth.

So, if you're interested in turning followers into customers, here are the best social media content strategy tips you can implement to grow and expand your brand while keeping community at the core of your business. 

Follow Hot Trends With Social Listening

One of the best ways to guarantee that your social media content strategy has the potential to yield your desired results is to give your followers the type of content they want to consume.

For instance, the most engaging format in 2022 is short-form video, with 66% of consumers preferring it over other types of content. Short-form video doesn't just outperform every other content format. Even more impressively, research has found that it is 2.5x more engaging than its long-form counterpart. That makes short-form video the perfect tool for grabbing, retaining, and directing follower attention.

In part, this doesn't come as much of a surprise. After all, we know for a fact that video marketing works, and TikTok’s rapid rise to global popularity is a good example of that. Employing video can lead to increased website traffic, boost product understanding, aid lead generation and sales, promote brand awareness, and improve ROI.

But the takeaway isn't that you should stop whatever you're doing and start focusing all your efforts on publishing (preferably short-form) videos on your social media feed. Instead, use social listening to keep up with the latest trends and social media features allows you to invest in content that's hot, effective, and likely to generate conversions.

To do this without having to keep up to date on all the latest social media research, look for inspiration from high-performing brands and from your existing online audience. Pixlee TurnTo lets brands collect, curate, reshare, and analyze customer content related to their industry or products. By monitoring the data and content you’re collecting through a user-generated platform (UGC) like Pixlee TurnTo, you’re much more likely to come across rising trends to recreate in your social media content strategy before they’re worn out.

Get Followers to Engage With UGC

UGC makes for an incredible social media content strategy because it’s authentic, doesn’t stick out like an advertisement in users’ social feeds, and it’s relatable to your followers. ‍74% of consumers rely on social media to inform their purchasing decisions — and they’re more likely to end up buying a product when they see someone they identify with promoting it, or just using it in everyday life.

This doesn’t mean you should just repost every single piece of UGC shared on social media by your customers. Get creative with the ways you reshare UGC, like building an Instagram profile highlight dedicated to unique uses of your product like Tile does. Tile and many other brands use Pixlee TurnTo to automatically collect high-quality UGC from social media by hashtag, mention, photo tag, and more. This content can then be filtered by custom tags, location, image recognition, and much more to ensure you easily find the best content for your social media content strategy.

You can also try running a social media contest to get followers engaging with your brand account. You don’t have to start by giving away a huge gift — incentivize your followers to take an action like sharing a piece of UGC related to your brand in exchange for a free sample or good discount code. Check out our guide to social media contests for more on this.

Join Forces With Diverse Creators

Today's consumers want variety. And their willingness to invest in a brand's solution directly depends on whether a brand knows how to diversify its social media feed. This means that not all content on your brand’s Instagram or TikTok should be polished, professional brand content. In addition to UGC, embracing influencer marketing to work with unique creators is a great way to add value and variety to your posts.

Followers will quickly unfollow if they decide that a brand is posting too much self-promotional content. Diversification on social media can be incredibly impactful, and it’s important to stay on brand while creating new, unique content that your community can resonate with. The logical solution to this problem is to find influencers whose target audience, values, and style aligns with your own, and whose posts have their own unique flair.

By doing something as simple as creating a way for your audience to learn about your products/services through the POV of an online personality they already trust, you can effectively reach new people, grab their attention, and introduce them to your solution. And considering that your goals include turning followers into customers, you can use influencer collaborations to convince your prospects to convert by establishing your relationship on trust and credibility.

However, if you wish to see next-level results from your influencer collaborations on social media, don't forget to base your collaborator choices on research. While working with a big name celebrity or influencer in your industry may seem like a great idea on the surface, smaller-scale creators may be a better option. These micro-influencers often have more engaged online audiences and more influence over the purchasing habits of their followers.

Working with a few brand ambassadors can be another solid option for up-and-coming brands to promote word-of-mouth marketing and build lasting relationships with creators. As the creator economy continues to grow, it matters to have a network of influencers who value your partnership.

Check out what real influencers want to see from brands who reach out to them in our 2022 Influencer Trend Report.

Use Social Media to Set Expectations

When trying to boost conversions through social media content, there's one thing you must understand: people use social media platforms for a variety of reasons. Generally, these include staying in touch with friends and family, filling spare time, finding information, and researching educational content. 

But don't forget that social media also plays a crucial part in people's buying journeys. Consumers don't just use social networks to follow brands. They actively and consciously go online to seek inspiration for things to buy.

So, if your goal is to turn followers into customers by producing and distributing conversion-inspiring social media content, understand these two things:

1. Your target audience is highly likely to analyze your brand's presence on social media to see what they can expect to receive in terms of customer experience. 

They'll check whether you have dedicated support accounts and seek out resources like unboxing videos to gauge whether the value you offer aligns with what they want and need. For instance, if you know that your target audience prioritizes quality customer service, it's paramount that your social media content caters to this particular consumer need. 

This is especially important for consumers discovering your brand for the first time, through a TikTok ad, for example. Imagine scrolling through your feed and coming across a product you’ve never seen before — you’re probably going to head to the video comments to explore commonly-asked questions and how the brand responds to them.

Even positive comments deserve a response from your brand sometimes to show appreciation for your online community!

On all of your social profiles, ensure you’re replying respectfully to your audience’s comments and questions while providing them a solution or a next step to resolve any issue.

2. The type of content you post will directly set your prospects' expectations, making it essential that you align your social media content with your brand identity.

If you use social media content to grab user attention, then employ links to send followers to your business website, make sure that the entire experience is uniform, on-brand, and gives your prospects the value they seek.

Start by ensuring that your social media posts match the identity of your brand. 

One way to do this would be to repurpose existing content (visual and textual) for your preferred distribution channels. Brands like Temptu do this splendidly, often transforming articles into bite-sized videos, then encouraging followers to read the entire story on the website.

Repurposing content is not the only way to set customer experience expectations. You can also accomplish this by: 

• employing presets to achieve uniformity
• repeating phrases from your website (like your USP) 
• doing your best to highlight the value your business offers on every single one of your social media posts

Also pay attention to post captions, as they should align with your brand's voice. Plus, ensure you always choose the right landing pages to link to. After all, sending traffic to your homepage may result in a few conversions. But unless the final destination matches your web visitors' user intent, the more likely scenario is that the hard-won organic traffic coming from your social media profiles will end in a bounce.

Don’t Post Just to Post

Lastly, as you explore strategies that will help you elevate your social media content and use it to drive conversions, don't forget that on social networks, like in offline life, more is not always better. It’s better to spend more time interacting with your audience in real-time and strategizing ways to improve your content strategy than spending all of your time creating and posting content without a plan or goal in mind.

With so much data about how people use popular social media, you can easily streamline your social marketing strategy and focus your attention on the approaches with the highest potential to help you convert customers.

For example, if your goal is to reach the biggest number of people, then your go-to should be the most popular platforms, which include TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Or, if you want to guarantee that your posts are picked up by the algorithm and shown to your followers, you'll want to perfect your posting schedule and practice consistency (ideally by publishing new content 1-2 times per day).

But, of course, successfully turning followers into customers isn't just about the where and when. It's just as much about knowing how to make every single piece of content stand out on its intended publishing platform.

On YouTube, this LEGO publishes a variety of animated content, creator insights, and story retellings using LEGO bricks, all made to appeal (primarily) to children.

But, knowing that networks like Instagram and Twitter have a more mature user base, the posts made for these platforms are made to appeal to adults who want to explore their creativity by building with LEGO bricks.

Whether you're thinking about adopting new social media features, picking what platform to publish on, or just trying to decide how often you should post per day, the best thing to do is not blindly follow advice and trends. Instead, be brave enough to experiment with different strategies. But also be organized enough to measure performance and make decisions based on data.

After all, the best way to use social media to turn followers into customers won't be to stick to a pre-written script. It will be to write your own and establish a unique way of reaching and engaging your audience, which will result in sales.