What kind of content should I create?

Today I’m talking about content, more specifically, what kind of content you should post, especially when you are getting started. When you are getting started on social media, or at least when you make the choice to create content to promote your new product or service, you may be asking yourself, “What kind of content should I create” when I put out a post?

It can be a bit confusing. Even though you’ve got the 15-minute content planner, you might be thinking about what kind of content to create. Should I have content that is about me or should it be more focused on my product or service? If you running this as a side hustle, you may be concerned that the content you are creating or want to create, is going to hurt your professional status.

The one thing that I am sure of is that you should NOT talk about your product

What is the content that you should be creating when you’re getting started?

My advice to everyone when they get started is that it should be a mix of content. Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with posting about your product, but you kind of want to not do that for as long as possible, especially in the beginning. And when I talk about it in the beginning, I’m talking about the first month or two of you getting serious with your content because the main aim of your content is really just to sort of let the algorithm and the social media platforms let them know that you’re here and that you are actually showing up every day or every week, whatever your content schedule is.

When you start creating content, I like to advise you to create a mix of content. Try to mix it up with a

• bit of humour,  
• Maybe it’s something informative.  
• Maybe you’re asking a question,  
• Maybe you’re running some sort of poll because there’s just a bit of curiosity around a particular topic  

The type of content that you make is not actually that important

The type of content that you make is not actually that important, especially in the beginning because no one is going to remember you posted five years ago or a year ago or even six months ago. People will forget, which is why you can also re-purpose content (not copy, although sometimes that’s also okay).  

Social media content is conversations that fly by us as we are living our lives or we are engaging on a platform and it really isn’t going to be remembered. Try and remember a post from 2 months ago. I bet it’s really hard  

As long as your content it’s not too controversial, you should be fine.  The important thing is to not make your product or service the centrepiece of your content. It’s going to lose audience members because they’re not ready for it? They’re not ready for you to talk about your product or service, and they are certainly not ready to hear about it.  

Your Audience wants to be entertained

It may feel uncomfortable to admit this, I know it was for me, but the reality is that all of us, no matter what platform we are on, be that a Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, we want to be entertained. If you want to be entertained, so does your audience

Isn’t that why you on social media? Isn’t that why you browse? You want to be entertained in some form or some way? Or maybe educated? Or maybe you use it as a news outlet of some sort. So the last thing you want to do is to speak directly about your product and you certainly don’t want to make it an anchor for your content strategy. 

So now you can experiment

Now that you know what you post isn’t that important you can start to experiment a bit. When I came to this realisation I started sharing a mix of content. Some of the content had deeply personal stories that I wanted to share. At first, I thought these wouldn’t be what people wanted to see, but it turns out those are still some of the best-performing posts on my LinkedIn profile.

I personally have a mix that ranges from serious, to informative, to ideas, and at least once a week, something funny.

Doing this has really allowed me to practice my own style of writing and allowed me to find my voice. I hope that in some way this article helps you find your voice so others that need to hear it, get the message you want to share.