You probably won’t get immediate results from posting content on social media. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. Do it right and your following will grow. And once it does, you can start using the fame you’ve built to get more sales and make more money from it.
Here are some core principles to keep in mind as you start.
Use Quantity to Create Quality
Quality is better than quantity, but quantity is how you figure out quantity.
You learn how to do things better by doing more of it and using the feedback you get to improve. That feedback is key. If you’re posting a lot of content and no one’s engaging with it, then what you’re doing isn’t working, and you need to change something.
And to be clear, this doesn’t mean creating and publishing a handful of short-form videos and then giving up just because they didn’t get any traction. Just being consistent is one of the most underrated marketing strategies HVAC companies can have.
A handful of videos is not enough volume to judge anything.
It’s pretty common for business owners to obsess too much over the quality of their content (especially when it comes to video content). Just don’t let obsessing over quality slow you down.
The only minimum standard you should have is to ask yourself whether you’re providing people value by saving them time, money, or both.
If you are, publish it.
I find it helpful to constantly remind myself that I am not the person buying my stuff. This helps me avoid the easy mistake of thinking I’m a better judge of what the market will like than the market itself.
The General Structure of all Content
Topic ideas are what you’re creating content about. Format is how you structure everything. I know how hard it can be to figure out what to say. But it gets a lot easier when you understand the general structure that repeats itself over and over again.
No matter what type of content you’re making, it all pretty much boils down to doing three main things:
- Get their attention.
- Keep their attention.
- Reward them.
First, You Have to Get Their Attention
If you don’t get their attention, nothing else matters because they’ll never stop scrolling. You do this with catchy headlines, images, or the first few seconds of a video.
If you’ve done HVAC email marketing before, think of this like your subject line. Once you figure out a few that work, it’s okay to reuse and tweak them over and over again.
If you’re the type of person who’d rather not waste time and just pay someone else who already has a playbook of what works and what doesn’t, then hire a marketing agency like us.
Important
Create content that matches the platform, or you’ll lose them immediately. For example, there’s a reason video content does better than slideshow carousels on TikTok.
Second, You Have to Keep Their Attention
If you can’t keep their attention, they’ll just move along before you ever have a chance to make an impact. Keeping people’s attention is one of the hardest things to do when it’s so easy for them to stop giving it to you and move on to the next thing with a swipe of their fingers.
A big part of retention comes down to the topic you’re talking about. But how you talk about it is equally important.
Keep it simple and just stick to lists and stories. Once you begin to figure out some that work, you can start mixing them together.
If you’re just getting started, I suggest making shorter content. Not because people have shorter attention spans, but because there are few variables to tweak and change the next time to figure out what’s working and what isn’t.
Sidenote
You may hear people say attention spans are getting shorter. But most real research on this subject suggests it's not actually attention spans that are getting shorter, but that the options from which we have to choose to give our attention to are increasing.
And some options are just more appealing than others. If attention spans were the problem, we wouldn’t have people binge an entire Netflix series in a single day.
Third, You Have to Make It Worth It
And on the note of attention spans, that’s where the reward comes in. The more reward they get from you, the more attention they’ll give you, for longer.
There’s no universal way to guarantee your reward will satisfy everyone, though. That’s why some people get enjoyment from cat videos, while others don’t. Or why someone could love watching metal fabrication content, but not share it with their friends who don’t.
Don’t overthink whether or not you’re making it rewarding enough for people who consume your content. You can solve most of these problems by creating content about topics your potential customers find interesting, in the formats they like to consume.
Again, when in doubt, video-based content formats tend to do pretty well.