How To Outshine The Competition With Your Social Media Content

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As a small business owner, you may feel like you can’t compete against the larger competition due to your limited budget, but that isn’t entirely accurate. While a larger marketing budget may help, you can still reach your customers with less money. Try out these five social media content tips to outshine your competition:

Take Pictures

Social media has become a very visual marketing network. Your social media admin should be taking memorable photos to share on different social platforms like Instagram, which is essential. You should take at least 1 hour out of your month or even week to conduct a photo shoot. During this process, be sure to capture enough great content to post for an extended period. And if you don’t have the time or an eye for creative graphics, try hiring a freelancer to take professional photos for your brand.

A useful tip: Plan and organize the shoot ahead of time, so you know who you want to target.

Create Videos

Just like photos, videos are taking over how users want to see your information. Videos do require a bit more skill to create, but not necessarily the fancy equipment like you might think. Since most business owners already have an iPhone, shooting quality videos is easy to do. Try purchasing a tripod to help create a sturdy platform and start recording! Keep in mind the maximum length that different social networks allow, for example Snapchat allows 10 seconds and Facebook up to two hours.

A useful tip: Add subtitles to videos that have someone talking since most users watch videos on their mobile devices in a place where they can’t play sound or simply don’t want to.

Go Behind the Scenes

Every product or service that your business provides allows for a behind the scenes moment. A good way to play off of this everyday occurrence is to show it to your customers through platforms such as Snapchat or Instagram. This little snapshot of your company will make users feel as if they are a part of your brand and are connected. Check out Morgan Brown on Snapchat for a behind the scene look into the life of an entrepreneur.

A useful tip: Share BTS moments of team building or the production of a product to show users your brand's human characteristics, this will help make your brand more relatable.

Find User-generated Content

The great thing about this tip is it's completely free and sparks interest in your business. You can hold a contest or create a hashtag that entices users to create unique and brand appropriate content that you share across your multiple social platforms.

A useful tip: Know the legal requirements of all contests held on social media since they differ in certain areas. Here is an example of the promotional guidelines for Instagram.

And Livestream

By now you should have heard of livestreaming content. This in-the-moment feature is growing fast and allows your customers to see things first hand. When you have an event or something others would want to see, try to livestream through Facebook Live or Periscope.

A useful tip: Plan ahead and think about lighting, sound and even weather conditions that could distract users from viewing your live feed or harm the connection altogether.

Once again, being a small business owner requires you to keep up with social media since it isn’t going anywhere but forward. By using these five tips about social media content, you can get ahead of your competitors. And if you’re still stuck on what type of content to create, use humor! Everyone loves to have a good laugh and most businesses allow for a sense of humor in their posts and advertising campaigns.