Today we are going to talk about my Creative Content Cake. This is the analogy I use to describe how to build the content assets for your social media strategy. Imagine a 3-layer chocolate cake.
The first layer, the base layer is the most important layer of your social media and it is your own content. So whether you create blog posts or videos or podcasts, or maybe you just have specials and offers and coupons and sales, whatever your content is that is specific to your business. That is your first layer. If You’ve created an email, you’re going to share it on your social media. You’re going to take those pieces of content and share it. This is the specific content for your business and should form the base of your social media strategy. That’s what your audience wants to hear from you. What are you doing? What’s your business about? So that’s the first layer of your creative content cake.
The second layer is curated content. I spend a lot of time talking about a process for finding and sharing curated content in my Social Media Timesavers webinar. Curating content is using other people’s content that speaks to your audience. So you have your own content and then use the curated content with attribution to bolster and enhance and build up the amount of content you are sharing. This is Content that your audience would be interested in that you didn’t create yourself. That is the second layer of your creative content cake.
The third layer of the cake, the top layer, is sporadic content. This is a piece of the creative content cake that you don’t want to miss. It’s unplanned content that just happens. Some examples include if you are out at a networking event and you snap a selfie of you and a colleague. Or if something happens at your business: a new product comes in, a favorite customer returns from vacation, you get a gift in the mail. You want to leave room in your editorial calendar for these sporadic pieces of content. You take a photo and you post it – something timely. You need to leave space for that. Don’t take the photo and then post 2 weeks later. These posts will always do much, much better than any of your other content because they’re genuine and real. And that’s what social media is about.
it’s not formulaic. It’s not a perfect image that you’ve crafted in your graphic design tool. Sporadic content has a place in your social media and you should use it. Those are the 3 layers of your creative content cake: Your content, Curated Content, and Sporadic Content. But there’s one more piece.
The last piece is what I call cherry on top content. This is content that when you’re doing all the other layers, it just adds a little something extra special to your social media. Unfortunately, a lot of people use it as their primary social media, and then they wonder why they’re not building business through their platforms. If you’ve been to any of my webinars or videos or seen me speak in person before you may know that I’m not a huge fan of these things. We are talking about things like motivational quotes and National Days like national talk like a pirate day.
However, I do think they have a place in your overall social media strategy. These are things that are fun and can add a little bit of flavor to your presence but should absolutely not be the primary piece of your social media, which is why I call it cherry on top. It should be that little, extra, something special when you have the other things in place.
And it’s really important when you’re choosing these particular motivational quotes or national days to celebrate that they’re related to your audience, to yourself, to your business, to your industry, or that you find a way to make it related. So you are just not throwing it out there. That is the complete Creative Content Cake.