5 Tips to Explore Your Content Strategy in 2022

The year is coming to an end (thank god) and you may or may not have accomplished all of your world-conquering content goals for 2021—but don’t stress because we’re here to make life a little bit easier for you.

With all of the obstacles the last year brought for us here in Australia, marketers have an opportunity to adapt, reset and test out some new content strategies. We’ve put together five tips that will help you to focus your goals for the year to come.

1. Look back to move forward

When it comes to creating your content marketing calendar for the year ahead, first you have to take a step back and review your performance over the last year. To measure the success of your content you’ll need to:

• Outline your definition of success. Website traffic growth? Share of voice amongst your competitors? Gains in overall following?
• Establish performance benchmarks. What does success look like to you? As marketers we can become metrics-centric and focus on followers and likes but it’s important to take a step back and figure out realistic benchmarks that serve a purpose for your account.
• Calculate the baseline costs involved in executing on your content plan.

2. User Generated Content (UGC)

With all of the production obstacles that the last two years have thrown at us- there’s absolutely no surprise that UGC exploded for both paid and organic content since the on-set of the pandemic.

We’re more likely to trust the recommendations of friends and family than brands when it comes to making buying decisions. This makes UGC an effective content style to build deeper emotional connections with your audience.

Recently we launched our Student Garden UGC product which has converted at more than double that of branded content and reduced our clients cost per lead by up to 88%. For us, the best thing to come out of this pandemic are meetings with slippers on and ROAS exploding UGC.

Content marketing statistics to know

90% of Millennials say authenticity is important to them when deciding which brands they support*

Yet, only 51% of consumers think that their favourite brands offer authenticity.

*Source: Social Media Today

3. Fit for platform

Create assets that are built for the platform. We see so many marketers waste time and money creating assets that are trying to serve two separate accounts. The best way to go about this is checking what’s trending on each platform before preparing your content.

Hosting fortnightly content trend meetings with your team is a great opportunity to share ideas for the fortnight ahead and ensure a diverse mix of content on your platforms.

4. Use. the. Features.

Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all have one thing in common. When they release and test new features, the algorithm rewards accounts that are quick to try them out. But we get it, with new updates coming out on a daily basis it can be quite hard to understand what to use and where to use them.

Here are some of the best places to keep up to date with new features:

1. Creators (Instagram)
   The Creators Instagram page shares insights and trend reports for content. It’s our go-to page here for understanding any new features and changes in the algorithm.
2. TikTok for Business
   TikTok for Business allows brands to release their creative side. It offers a tonne of resources for how to get started on TikTok, sharing inspiration by industry and trend insights for audio.

5. Ask your audience

The key to really nailing your content marketing for organic or paid social is understanding your audience and ensuring that your account is fit for purpose. Content is a two way street and as social continues to expand, adapt and grow, having your audience on your side is always going to help in the long run.

At Social Garden we send out quarterly surveys to all of our clients to ensure that we are meeting their needs, and delivering where it counts. We also do this with our socials.

There’s nothing wrong with sharing recent content and asking your followers to comment on whether they enjoyed it. Another content marketing idea we love is to create polls and Q&A’s to find out what topics they would like to see on your page.

Key takeaways for your content strategy in 2022

• Establish your metrics that define and measure content success early on
• Don’t be afraid to use UGC to overcome production challenges
• Create assets that are built for platform and test out new features to take advantage of the algorithm
• Engage with your audience and find out what they want to see from your content marketing strategy