CHELSIE SHARES FOUR INSIGHTS FOR SOCIAL CONTENT SUCCESS

The world of social is constantly evolving - what works today might totally flop tomorrow. As a result, everyone is on a constant quest to unpack and find out what *exactly* it takes to create talkable, shareable content that enables you to stand out in busy feeds.  Real, credible, relatable insight is the answer - but that shouldn’t surprise anyone. 

The fact is though, people think just cracking one insight is enough - but the reality couldn’t be more different. The best ideas that actually perform in social only emerge when that perfect alchemy of several different types of insight takes place -  and (perhaps controversially), when insight plays a role at all stages of the process, even after publishing.

Audience Insight

The insight holy grail, we’re not here to debate that. The need to deep dive into what makes your audience tick is key — what they love, what they hate, what keeps them up at night. Creating content that truly resonates is the thing that will distinguish those pieces of content that ‘relate’ to them from those that ‘see’ them. Without adopting a ‘people-first’ approach, you’ll just be going off your gut - something that isn’t necessarily always going to work when you’re writing content for an audience you’re not part of. 

Splendid content experts utilise a variety of sources to understand our audiences more authentically and deeply - from social listening, daily community management (getting into the heart of the comments), to Global Web Index, Pulsar, internal groups, and published studies or reports, it’s essential the right insights are the springboards to content. 

But even with the best insight in the world, stopping there wouldn’t guarantee success. In social in particular, at least three other insights are critical… 

Competitor Insight

Insight doesn’t just come from knowing your audience and your brand.  It can also come from external sources - and a key one for us is keeping an eye on the competition.  Gaining insight into what they’re doing & how it’s being received will help build a strategy and content that is distinctive. Using social listening tools, such as Pulsar, to monitor conversations and keywords related to your industry, you can spot new trends and adapt accordingly. Social listening also allows you to monitor and understand the sentiment surrounding your brand - again all valuable insight to help inform future content; something that has hugely helped us turn the tide of negatively on social for brands such as Travelodge.  

Publishing Insight 

Knowing when and where your audience hangs out online is key. Whether it's during the morning coffee break or the evening commute, timing is everything. From an organic perspective, it’s diving into the back end to figure out when they're on their phones -  is it once the kids have gone to school? Or is it on the commute to and from the office? And from a paid perspective, finding out what channels they are on. This insight into their existing habits will contribute to whether your content is a banger or not.

One example of this publishing insight coming into play at Splendid is when we launched the ‘Festive Bake Lovers’ fan group - to launch the annual NPD, a campaign that lived and breathed on WhatsApp only. Who’s to say if launches on X, for example, it would have been as successful? 

Performance Insight

Your content is live - great, but that’s not where the need for insight ends. Last but not least, performance insight is like our North Star. It's all about keeping tabs on how our content is performing in the wild. Are we hitting our KPIs? Are people engaging with what we're putting out there? It's a constant feedback loop that keeps us on our toes and helps us level up our game - allowing us to refine strategies, experiment with new ideas, and evolve the content approach over time to ultimately remain competitive. 

Clearly, effective use of insight goes way beyond the audience and far beyond the ideation stage. We believe it is essential throughout each step of the content creation process - and it’s not just one type of insight you need to be thinking about. 

Good, effective social content ideas combine learnings from audience, publishing, competitor and performance together, but making it feel effortless.