Visually Engaging: How to Create and Manage Great Visual Content

In today’s social media driven world, it is becoming more important to keep up with each new platform to keep your brand relevant and attractive. Small businesses have the particular challenge of constantly needing to engage with customers through the various social media platforms on top of running their business day to day.

Moreover, the necessity of having great visual content creates another challenge for these small businesses. The days of relying on stock photos and videos from Shutterstock or Adobe Stock are over. Small businesses need to be authentic in their content – no matter the platform. While maintaining this authenticity on all social media platforms is important, there are two visually driven platforms where it is particularly important. Instagram and TikTok.

Some small business owners may ask themselves if they really need this for their particular business and the answer is most definitely yes; regardless of what type of business you own, you also need to own social media.

Managing these social obligations can be time consuming – especially for those that do not have a dedicated social media expert. From creating the content to planning and distributing it, I have outlined some tips and tricks to make life a little easier when it comes to social media marketing. Check out the information below and see how you can implement it into your small business.

Know Your Customers

This may seem straight forward, but when I say, “know you customers,” I do not just mean know what they like to order when they come in. Know your customers in terms of their interests, hobbies, etc. to connect with them better when creating visual content online.

How do you know what your customers’ interests and hobbies are? Great question! There are three simple tricks (not really tricks) to gaining this information:

1.     The most classic marketing technique of all – have an offline conversation with those that do business with you. Like my previous article, “Five Simple Steps to Effectively Market Your Small Business" mentions, getting personal with your customers is a surefire way to get more interaction on social media. When you converse with your customers, ask them if they have seen your social media and let them know of any updates coming (like a new TikTok account) or ask them what they would like to see more of online.

“Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create raving fans.”―Ken Blanchard

2.     Another way to get the customers to tell you what they want is by running polls on your social media profiles that are already established. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are all great platforms to have some valuable Q&A with your customers and loyal followers.

On Instagram, post a story announcing your new TikTok profile (with a link to go directly to it) and then post a following story with a poll asking your followers what they would like to see on this new account. The content can be a plethora of things like, behind the scenes of your business, funny moments at work, how to videos, and many other things. TikTok is a great place to create a theme in your content and build a following that way. Get creative!

This method is also great for assessing the content you are posting on your profiles that you already have established. For example, ask your followers what they would like to see more of in their Instagram feeds and stories. Encourage your followers to send you direct messages with their responses and make sure you respond to each suggestion.

3.     Finally, a quick way to see what your customers would like is to check out similar companies’ profiles and see what kind of content they are posting. Do not just blindly following along with any random profile, however. See what companies get many engagements with their content and see who does not. The kind of content that you want to post needs to be authentic, but still in line with what your type of customers already like and are accustomed to.

Knowing your customers is very important for all aspects of business, but when it comes to creating attractive content, it is crucial. The next section outlines how to create these pieces of content for your business.

Follow Trends

When creating content, an easy way to find motivation on the visuals is to look around you – online and offline. What trends are happening on social media? An effective way to gain attention on a platform like TikTok is by joining in on a popular challenge that is trending. These challenges can be fun and if executed properly (timing, quality and effort) can help you gain a lot of followers and attention to your small business.

Take time to feature yourself or your employees doing a fun challenge and post it to your account. This is not only a cool way to gain loyalty from your customers, but also a fun way to engage your employees. Other challenges include mild acting and voice-overs like the #TumbleweedChallenge and the comedic #RespectTheDripChallenge. These challenges will surely change over time, but once you see a couple popular videos of the same challenge, quickly get on the same path to create one yourself. No need to be one of the first, or even in the first 1,000 to do these challenges and get noticed, but part of being current is how quickly you can create when the trend sets.

Following along with the themes of the year are an easy way to produce relatable content. Seasonal and holiday posts are very common and this is something you and your business should take full advantage of as well.

The last kind of trends to go along with are the industry trends of your business. This is a great way to show your unique qualities about your small business. What are your processes like behind the scenes? How do you create the product or service you sell? What makes you different? Restaurants are taking advantage of TikTok by piecing together small clips of how their food is made. BuzzFeed made this concept popular and different food establishments have taken full advantage of the attention they have received. Coffee shops, breweries, pizza shops and other restaurants all have the ability to create this kind of content.

The most important detail of creating this content is to make sure that it is high quality. For most pictures, it helps to have a high quality camera available to produce high quality pictures, but most new smartphone cameras will do for the video content on TikTok or Instagram. Aside from having content that people want to watch, it is important that people actually want to look at it. Grainy pictures and videos will immediately turn away any followers or potential followers.

Connect Your Social Media Accounts

Cross posting content is a quick way for you to cover all of the social media platforms with one piece of content. Regardless if your followers are the same individuals or not across your profiles, pushing out a lot of content is vital to successfully growing online.

When you post a video from TikTok to your Instagram, include your TikTok username in the Instagram post that way the followers on Instagram know how to reach you on both platforms. I advise the same when posting to TikTok from Instagram.

TikTok allows you to connect your Instagram account to your TikTok profile as well. Be sure to do this, because when you gain more followers on TikTok, they will be able to easily find your Instagram.

Keep engaging with your audience and other accounts on both Instagram and TikTok. There is no overnight recipe to grow your social media platforms from scratch to thousands of followers. High quality, consistent content enables your accounts to grow and for your business to stay relevant. Make sure you post responsibly and use captions and hashtags strategically.

If You Decide You Need Outside Help

Reach out to me at my contact information below, I would love to help you grow your social media accounts for your business.

About the Author:

David Brantley is a young marketing professional whose goal is to help small businesses thrive in this fast-paced, ever-changing world. When he is not creating marketing content, you can find David working on his startup @MarqoApp or delivering a keynote on leadership and innovation in young professionals. Connect with David on Instagram (@DavidLeeBrantley) or LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/david—brantley).