7 Tips to Improve Your Social Media Content by Guy Danhoff (MOHealthMedia)

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, creating social media content was like playing a game of checkers. Consumption rates experienced a meteoric rise in views and engagement as over 3 Billion people are now using social media. Moving forward in 2021, I believe advocating through social media channels will be like playing chess as the most significant challenge facing organizations is the ability to cut through all the noise and clutter to grab their audience's attention. While social media content is always king, the alignment of its goals to its strategy is paramount heading into the new year. One of my favorite quotes for creating social media content is, "What gets measured, gets improved."

Once you have established clear goals for 2021, here are seven easy tips to level-up your social media content's effectiveness if you are looking to increase your influence, impact, and advocacy. The following proven seven tips are the cornerstone at Missouri Healthy Schools as we use these tips and measure the real-time results:

1. Start with Your Why in communicating your unique value proposition. Simon Sinek shared during his TEDTalk that "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it."
2. Master the art of storytelling in your digital media.
3. Create and use a functional social media calendar to organize your daily activity.
4. Engage your audience by crafting attention-grabbing headlines for your posts.
5. Use data to drive decisions through social media data analytics.
6. Repurpose! Repurpose! Repurpose! Your high producing video content.
7. Make video content shorter (under 12-minutes) as the average YouTube watch time in 2020 was 11-minutes and 22-seconds.
8. BONUS: Incorporate Micro-Influencers for Advocacy

The tips will help kickstart and guide your social media content in 2021. Stay tuned for my next blog as I unpack several strategies for helping your organization get noticed in a noisy and crowded space.

Guy Danhoff is the co-host of MOSHAPE's most viewed weekly content through the Live webinar series #Zagging101 sponsored by Heart Zones, Inc. (12 episodes at MOSHAPE YouTube). His step-by-step implementation of social media marketing strategies and practices directly influences many SHAPE state associations through his training and one-on-one consulting. Since March 2020, Guy has launched and produced for Missouri Healthy Schools (MHS) live weekly streaming content during the pandemic #StuckatHomeRecess, #StuckatHomeSnacks, #SpakerSpot, #TastyTuesday, and recently the host of #MOHealthMedia. Lastly, Guy was a panelist alongside the four most recent SHAPE America Presidents during a live keynote Town Hall session regarding The Impact of Social Media on Advocacy During the COVID-19 Pandemic during MOSHAPE's 2020 Virtual Convention in November.