When you post to social media you are already asking people to invest their time, energy, and attention in what you are putting out, so what you're putting out should be of value.

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To be successful on social media you need to go in with the mindset of giving, not taking. Ask what you can do for your audience, how can you help them rather than how can they help you.

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People have an almost instinctual mindset to 'get away' the second they feel like they are being sold to. Even if the product, service, or deal is good we are weary when it’s beneficial to someone else and not ourselves and quickly disregard the information being given to us as another 'social sales pitch'.

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The first step to providing valuable content is knowing who your audience is, what are their interests? What problems might they have and how can you serve them?

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What you are posting needs to provide value either by teaching or entertaining your audience, if it does neither it isn’t worth sharing.

Know your audience

Know who your audience is and whom you want your audience to be. Based on that, think about what they want to see from your social media. Chances are, like almost all of us, they don’t want to be repetitively given a sales pitch, they want something that is helpful or entertaining to them. For example, maybe your business is in finance your customers might want to know about a certain account where they can get better interest rates. Maybe you’re a cybersecurity company, it might be helpful to give quick tips on how to stay safe online.

Shareable content

The best way to reach more people is to make content which people will share. To do this your content has to be so valuable that the viewer wants someone else to see it. This works even better when the person after that then knows more people they want to share the post with creating a compound effect of people viewing your content.

Slow and steady

Social media is a long game, like almost all good things it won’t happen overnight, and if it does come quick it will most likely go twice as fast. People aren’t going to follow you from one post, they will want to see more and see if the content you are putting out its consistent and is consistently relevant to them to make it worth following you.