How to Create Successful Content on Any Social Media - Simple Guide for Artists

How to create successful content?

Good content is the key to every successful page/account on any social media platform. Your followers come from your content and make a personal connection with you, this is why making good content is very important.

So what content should you make? How to promote it organically or with paid promotions? How to target your content to your audience? these questions will get answered soon and more than that.

First, let’s talk about what successful content is:

Successful content is content that drives high percentages of engagement, e.g. comments, shares, saves, likes, follows, profile visits, etc.

What algorithm of a social media platform is? Every social media platform has it own algorithm, it what gets the platform to recommend the user content that is relevant directly to him, it’s what standing behind the exposure that your content gets, it what makes your content a success or failure. However, there are many types of algorithms in every platform, but we focus on the one that drives exposure to your content.

It takes time to ‘beat’ the algorithm of a social media platform or to understand how it works, and I have great news for you, you don’t have to know how the algorithm works to expose your content that you make, it’s not your job, even if you knew, I don’t think it would help you that much, you and the algorithm have something in common, you both want engagement.

What content should you make?

The formulas of good content are: (yes, there are several formulas)

1. Good content = time wasting + shareable

2. Good content = time wasting + commentable

3. Good content = shareable + commentable

Time wasting – time wasting is when your content makes the user to stay long time on the content or in another words, it’s when your content makes the user to stay long time on the platform. You can do this by making long videos or a Carousel (several images on the same post), at least these are the most common ways, after all every platform has it own features of content. However know that making long videos is relevant as long as you keep attract the audience to watch. For example, on YouTube the most effective thing on a video’s exposure is the ‘Watch Time’ – how much time the audience watch your video in average, you want to keep your viewers to watch your video to the end.

Shareable – when creating content you should ask yourself if you or your audience would want to share it. Sometimes even when the content is good the audience will Like it but not necessarily share it, likes are not that relevant anymore since social media platforms noticed that users like posts even without really liking it or seeing the post, it is just an automatic habit to scroll down and like posts. This is why likes don’t really rate the content if it’s good or not. However, people share content when they think other people would want to see it.

Commentable – Commentable content is when the content drives users to comment on the post, to say what they think, to make conversations on the post. Comments get users to stay longer on the platform and on your posts, maybe to read comments of other users or to comment themselves, also, when users comment on the content it means that the content is interesting and awaking feelings to the audience.

So, Ask yourself if the content you made is shareable, commentable and a time waster. 

Organic exposure/ Reach

You succeed to make a good content, good for you! The difficult part has done.

But how do you target it to users who have way more chance to care of your content? Uploading content without targeting it will give you irrelevant exposure.

If your content is relevant for guitarists then the most likely is that basketball players wouldn’t like it, right? Plus, when users search for the specific topic of your content, they might find your content if you target it.

Then how can you target your content to the right audience? First, understand who your audience are, the more information you have on your audience – the closer you can get to them. Knowing everything about your audience includes gender, genres and topics, age, etc.

You should learn more about how to find your targeted audience here: (new tab).

When you know your audience, it’s time to know your content, don’t worry, it’s not something too complicated but important. Think what your content is about, what genres, what subgenres, how would you explain the content? What do you see in the content, etc. For example, if I made a cover of the song “Patience” by “Guns n’ Roses” I would explain it that way: (music, rock, 90’s music, guns n roses, patience, cover, guitar (in case that I’m playing guitar in the video), home recording, etc.)

From time to time you will learn to do it faster, it shouldn’t take a long time to write it down.

When you done, you are ready to upload your content. Social media platforms mostly target a post with Hashtags and Keywords.

Means that the Hashtags you choose for your post will help the algorithm target your post to the right audience. Take the relevant information you gathered on your audience and on your post and turn them into Hashtags.

In addition, keywords are not less important than Hashtags. The words you use in the title and on the description of your post are very important for the targeting process. For example, if I made a tutorial about how to play “Patience” by “Guns n’ Roses” its solo, the title of the video might be “How to Play Patience’s Solo by GNR on Electric Guitar (Guitar Tutorial)” and the description might be “In this guitar lesson video I’ll be teaching you how to play Patience’s guitar solo by Guns n’ Roses…”

As you can see I explained what’s my video about so the algorithm can direct it to my audience.

Secret Pro Tip: You can notice that I used different words to explain my video in the title and in the description, e.g. tutorial/lesson, by doing so you help the algorithm to understand better what is your post about, plus, it will enlarge the chances of your post to get discovered on the search page.

Using both good Hashtags and good keywords will give the algorithm a full understanding about the content.

Paid Promotion

Organic promotion is important but don’t overrate it, every social media platform wants to earn money, in the end of the day it’s a business before it’s a social media platform. A lot of platforms give the option to pay to increase Reach and exposure to your post, it called “Paid Promotion”.

Is it really necessary? Paid promotion is highly effective to grow your brand way faster on the platform especially when you take in consideration the competition that you have with other users of your niche, however, it is definitely possible to grow your brand without using paid promotion, but the time and effort are hard to handle.

Why should you use paid promotion? Usually, the paid promotion service of social media platform is cheep, it doesn’t require a big amount of money to promote your brand, depends on the platform you are on. In addition, in the most of the times paid promotions are even more targeted to your audience, before paying you need to fill information about your audience that you usually cannot give organically.

So, how and when should you use paid promotion? Everyone has his own strategy of growing up his brand, there is not only one right way to grow up your brand or to use paid promotion. However the smartest way to use it when you don’t have a lot of money to invest is to upload a few of your good content and to figure out what’s doing the best, find out what your audience connect the most, what a specific post gives you the highest percentage of engagement and then promote it using the paid promotion, help this specific post to reach lots of your audience. I find this strategy very useful since you can’t rely only on organic reach.

To sum up, to create successful content on a social media platform you have to pay attention to your audience, analyze what is going on your posts, use the formulas and when the time comes pay to promote.

About me:

My name is Darel Bens, I'm 19 year old, I've been into music since I was 13, I learned music production and the last 3 years I've spent learning marketing. Making marketing strategies is one of my hobbies and my professions.

Plus, I'm a graphic designer which I learned at home and worked with my brother on a huge project of a horror game called "Denial" (our first game), I was the graphic designer and the sound designer of the game.

My dream is to be a successful singer and to expose my messages to those who care.

Write to me: darelbens1@gmail.com

My Instagram: @officialdarelbens