The new mantra in the digital age. We, as consumers are guzzling content like never before. Check for yourself how many hours you are on the mobile. Be it for entertainment, work-related information, referencing, chatting, business exchange or simply scrolling through your various feeds to amuse yourself post-work or I dare say during work as well.

In India, as we all know that the digital age is truly underway with every Brand known to mankind on the digital platform. Who does not have a website or even a social handle? In all this mayhem who is paying attention to the quality of content produced.
Business only works by and large on performance parameters. How many likes, shares and page growth has owned media got. By now we all know the concept of owned media, paid media, earned media which I would like to rename as shared media.

The critical debate now is how much content is too much content, the quality of the said content, and what is relevant to the business.
Many a time the social handles have become vanity handles for marketing managers to actually crow to their peer group as to what are their numbers and engagement on their page.

It is time for some hard questions to be answered. Am enlisting some for you to mull over.
Why should anybody come to your page every day?
Do they need to be educated every day about your product?
How much trivia do you expect them to consume?
What kind of trivia is relevant to your audience?
How can you reach out to newer audiences?
How often do you need to reach out to a new audience?
What is your plan for growing the page in terms of quality?
Do you want any follower or would you want followers who are potential buyers, advocates or even influencers?
How much are you willing to pay for strategic content?
These are all not easy questions… Media has come of age where we need to ask these hard questions.
The million-dollar question which needs to be answered is why should a consumer come to your page?

Do you have stories about your brand there? Could be the people behind the work/design/product. Stories about customers perhaps. Interesting information about the product, how it is made, special qualities of the same. Some history of the brand and products.
Relevant associations for the brand – in terms of people or even other brands that are complementary to yours. Stories and pics which are befitting your brand i.e. minding the brand language and tonality.

What I have seen is that most brands post content mindlessly which is predominantly what we call hygiene posts just to keep the page alive. This is like a tick mark that the task is done,
Good content is an investment, you need a good team/agency who understands your business, the objectives behind whatever you have set out to do, the desired outcomes and what is very very important is what are their core strategic thoughts and execution skills for content and for managing/enhancing your brand.

How are they planning to project your brand? Serious, entertaining, information-oriented, storytelling, pictorial, video first, testimony oriented? This will help evaluate the thinking process of your brand agency. How often will they post and why? Which platforms.
How often will they come up with new ideas without a brief which will up your social ranking…
All this needs to be given a good thought while developing the content and more importantly the budget which is required to push the envelope. Each platform in social honestly needs a different kind of expertise.

LinkedIn -needs more long-form content
Twitter – one needs to be pithy as well as a trend follower or trend creator
Instagram – more pictorial and definitely, more storytelling
Facebook — short videos may give better traction with maybe real stories of end-customers
YouTube…can actually be educational depending on what your product is. Customers would like to know how to make the best use of your product or service. Be it a shampoo, lipstick, food container, a consumer durable or even a 4-wheel drive.

There are some categories which are really conducive for social, some of them are:
Holiday destinations/tourism in general. There is so much content one can generate.
Craft beer — great storytelling opportunities of the beer itself, usage, moments, etc.
Cosmetics, Malls/retail …video/pictorial possibilities. Very visual in nature.
Museums, city walks, architectural monuments
Edibles – FMCG
Snacks and beverages
Hospitality
Mobile accessories
And many many more

Great content involves a little of all as suggested. Educational, entertaining, human-centric and all of this needs a budget to be earmarked which will go a long way in producing superlative content with which your consumer will want to engage.

There is no point in promoting any video/post if the content is not produced well. Let’s put a little more thought into what we all are doing. Two posts or less per week is far better than poorly produced content done just to tick the deliverable calendar.