Overall content strategy is more than posting the latest product, company update or meme. It’s an opportunity to present yourself and your brand to an audience that has the ability to advocate and promote your cause.

Minutes or hours can be the timeline between a content idea and clicking “publish” for the world to see. No matter the timeframe, here are five questions to ask yourself about social media content before its first impression.

Does this fit my company’s brand?

Social media can be a valuable tactic towards reaching overall company goals, and it can be easy to view any new idea as the next best content for your profile.

Understand the mission and vision of your brand – is this single piece of content or campaign fitting into those statements? Don’t get caught up in a word-for-word interpretation, but it is important to understand where the company is going, and using your social media content to play a supporting role.

Does this fit my brand’s personality?

Is your brand known for its humor, or is your brand personality on social media more of a “suit and tie” approach? Knowing your brand’s personality on social media accounts will give you and your marketing team an awareness of what content themes fit when developing day-to-day and overall content marketing strategies.

Need to find out how to develop your brand personality? Check out these questions developed by Twitter, that are helpful in identifying themes and brand personas.
NOTE: you’ll have to download the Twitter planner, but within are helpful resources and the brand personality questions, directly from Twitter.

Is my content right for each platform?

What works on Twitter doesn’t always perform the same on other platforms. Along with your brand personality, personalize your content for the platform and audience that it will serve. This could mean:

• Creating graphics and videos that are sized to the platforms they will be served on.
• How your post copy will look and feel can vary between platforms.
• Are you using hashtags? Some platforms have a stronger use in a content collection form, versus using hashtags as part of your sentence.
• Think beyond the feed post – are you using Instagram or Facebook Stories?

How can I repurpose the content I have?

While developing and after posting your content, how can you potentially reuse this content in future social media post.

• Can I use a long-form video and find ways to cut it up for shorter, easy-to-digest videos?
• Can key facts or quotes from a video or discussion posted be used for stunning, shareable quote graphics?
• Within this article or fact sheet, can I create infographics and/or one fully encompassing video to highlight facts in a different light besides text?
• Are there opportunities in the future to completely reuse the content, is it evergreen information that will be helpful to users who see it six months from now?

For example, I work with clients that lead and attend conferences, share thought leadership and have strong followings on social media. When I get a link to an article about research and innovations, providing that content to social media followers through a simple video can provide the information needed quickly. In addition, that article may have key facts and figures that can be used to create infographics that are both quickly informative and shareable to followers.

Understanding what you’ve done in social media gives you deeper insight on opportunities in the future. Holidays, milestones and engaging content in the past can be reused in relative situations and a way to keep your communications more community-focused.

Is my content worthy of financial resources to promote?

Some social media platforms will notify you on social media content that out performs an overall average of posts. With an average of 5% of your social media followers having your post show up in their feed, it is even more important to understand metrics when making a decision on using advertising to increase views, engagements and traffic.

What worked?

Look back on your research and social media analytics and use what worked and what didn’t, to guide your future. It’s important to look back on your social media analytics through a micro lens to understand content-specific successes, and a macro sense to see the bigger picture.

Keep your data in one place to easily identify trends and make your social media even more successful.

That being said…

One of the greatest parts of social media is the ability to learn and grow. Always seek to provide value to your customers and you’ll start to see even more success in your results, and more joy in producing them.