Standing out on social media is more challenging than ever. Yet, seeing that social networks are rapidly becoming one of people’s primary channels for brand and product discovery, learning how to create and distribute attention-grabbing content is crucial for your brand’s growth.
Not convinced that your social media marketing strategy needs an upgrade? Consider the following data about the role social media plays in most people’s lives. Over 26% of users use social networks to find products to purchase or inspiration for things to do or buy. 82% of people use social platforms for product research. And as of 2025, almost 25% of global internet users have purchased on social media.
So, the question really isn’t whether you need to up your social media marketing efforts. It’s how you can do it in a way that will drive results across a variety of social channels.
There are numerous tactics for effectively building brand awareness, engaging potential leads, and drawing prospects into your sales funnel. The methods we’ll focus on in this article will prioritize relationship-building, brand credibility positioning, and boosting customers’ purchase intent. So, without further ado, let’s find out how you can create and distribute engaging content across social media channels.
Empathize with Your Followers
What do people expect from brands? Research suggests that they care about much more than just high-quality products and services. In fact, one of the biggest brand expectations consumers have is that businesses demonstrate they understand and care about their customers’ needs, expectations, feelings, and priorities.
Survey data found that 73% of shoppers expect companies to understand and 62% even want brands to anticipate their needs. But what does this mean? Are consumers simply looking for brand experiences they know will yield effective solutions to their pain points? Or is there something deeper going on?
Well, one way to look at this insistence regarding expectation alignment is to remember that most consumers aren’t looking for just a transaction when choosing what businesses to buy from. Remember, they regularly consider what a brand stands for or how it makes them feel. It’s easy to conclude that every engagement and conversion signals that your target audience feels connected to your brand.
One of the best ways to initiate and strengthen these conversion-driving connections with social media content is to show you empathize with your followers.
How to Do It Right
- Produce content that accurately describes how your target audience feels regarding their primary pain point.
- Communicate that you empathize with your leads — especially if you operate in a sensitive industry.
- Present solutions from a compassionate standpoint. Your leads don’t want a sales pitch. They want to know they can rely on your business to handle their needs with compassion.
A Real Brand Doing It Right
CodaPet’s social media presence is an exceptional example of compassionate, customer-centric content. This brand offers end-of-life care for pets — a highly sensitive service that requires both expertise and empathy.
If you think about it, the best way for this brand to engage its audience on social media isn’t to pitch its service, but rather to:
- demonstrate it understands its target audience needs to make a difficult decision
- validate potential prospects’ feelings
- provide reassurance that they are making the best choice for the benefit of their furry family members
The reels CodaPet posts on Instagram do all of these things with success, and they’re not just creating a stronger emotional bond between the brand and its followers. More importantly, they are communicating that CodaPet’s priority isn’t necessarily to make a sale — rather, it’s to support and help pet owners who have no one else to turn to.
Source: instagram.com
Provide Inspiration In Places People Are Most Likely to Look for It
Social commerce is growing in popularity. And it’s only likely to continue doing so in the future.
But the best way to use social media as a sales (or even lead-generation) channel isn’t necessarily to treat it as a marketplace. It’s far better to use it to distribute engaging content that builds product and brand awareness. Then use that initial contact to capture leads and gently nurture them into customers over time.
This social media marketing tactic works because (most) consumers don’t make shopping decisions instantaneously. Instead, they move through a buyer’s journey. They begin by recognizing a need. Then, they research potential solutions to their pain points and evaluate different options. Finally, they make a purchase decision and buy.
In other words, the likelihood that your social media content engages people who are purchase-ready (and actually stands out as the best possible choice for their unique needs and expectations) is very low.
A much better way to nurture leads into customers is to reach your audience in the initial stages of the buyer’s journey. And the best method to do that? Use social media platforms to share inspirational (or aspirational) content meant to grab your prospect’s attention and build product awareness. From there, gently expose your leads to more conversion-oriented content, guiding them toward a purchase decision.
How to Do It Right
- Produce content that communicates your unique value propositions in ways that are relatable to your ideal customers.
- Distribute content on social media channels that your ideal customers use.
- Optimize for the type of browsing consumers do on different networks — for instance, TikTok is for entertainment; Pinterest is for creative and aesthetic inspiration.
- Invest in content formats that attract the most attention on your target distribution channel.
A Real Brand Doing It Right
If you check out Pergola Kits USA, you’ll find that it’s a business that sells custom shade structures — a very specific type of product. And the simple fact is that this brand’s target audiences don’t often have sufficient product knowledge to know what to search for when exploring potential solutions to their pain points.
To solve this conversion barrier, Pergola Kits uses Pinterest to distribute inspirational, awareness-building content.
Because Pinterest is a highly visual social network, it allows Pergola Kits to communicate the aesthetic value of its solutions without needing followers to understand the difference between pergolas, pavilions, gazebos, and other types of covers. All this brand needs to do is upload highly aesthetic visuals of its structures, then let Pinterest’s algorithm do the rest by showing that content to users whose interests it matches.
Source: pinterest.com
Show the Aspirational Lifestyle Your Solutions Enable
One of the more interesting consumer behavior findings from the past few years is that a growing number of people now fall into the category of aspirational buyers.
According to PWC, 39% of consumers fall into this group. And they are characterized as consumers who “strive for more in life; they enjoy pushing themselves to learn new skills and tend to be career-oriented and opportunistic.’ In other words, they want success, status, and premium experiences.
Now, one of the best ways to engage these customers on social media is to depict the aspirational lifestyle your solutions can enable. This will grab your prospects’ attention and help them perceive your solutions as the key to achieving their goals — a belief that’s very likely to guide them toward an eventual conversion.
How to Do It Right
- Identify the qualities in the experiences your ideal customers seek out and highlight those characteristics in your content.
- Prioritize visual content formats like images and videos.
- For the ‘feel’ of your content, strive for a balance between high production value and authenticity.
A Real Brand Doing It Right
As a business selling designer scent subscriptions in the beauty industry, Scentbird has its job cut out for it. On the one hand, it needs to carve out a name for itself in a sea of hugely popular competitors. On the other hand, it has to do so while appealing to the exact right audience that’s likely to buy its products.
To accomplish these goals, Scentbird creates and distributes social media content that depicts a very specific lifestyle. It shows users enjoying a wide variety of perfumes and fragrances. It emphasizes the luxurious feel of self-care through fragrance. But it still presents this enjoyment as an ‘affordable’ treat that anyone can acquire.
In doing so, Scentbird’s social content reaches and engages the exact type of buyer who’s likely to invest in its offer. More importantly, by posting often, the brand creates immense brand awareness — the key to the growth it’s after.
Source: tiktok.com
Use Social Content As Proof Of Your Credibility
One of the best uses of social media is to build brand trust, which is important to a whopping 95% of consumers. Brand trust is a powerful driver of growth and profitability, with consumer behavior data even showing that 68% of shoppers have paid more for a product in the past year because they trusted the brand behind it.
There are many different ways to use social media to demonstrate expertise and build trust. But if your primary goals include creating and distributing content to engage and attract your ideal customers in your sales funnel, credibility-centric posts might be the way to do it.
The reason for this is simple. People always feel more comfortable interacting with (and buying from) businesses they consider trustworthy. And they’re not just looking for proof of your ability to solve their needs. They also need to know that your business is dependable, customer-centric, and that it’s not just looking to make a profit.
So, by using social media to build brand credibility, you can effectively attract your ideal customers’ attention through expertise positioning, then earn their trust and guide them toward a positive purchase decision with social media content that focuses on dependability.
How to Do It Right
- Incorporate social proof into your social presence — whether that includes quoting positive customer feedback or directly reposting user-generated content.
- Remember that authenticity and transparency generate much more credibility than impressive claims. Make these the foundation of your social media trust marketing strategy.
- Don’t limit yourself to popular social media networks for trust building. In some cases, niche websites, apps, and marketplaces can also serve as social platforms — especially if you can use them to build relationships with your leads.
A Real Brand Doing It Right
John Campbell is a real estate agent specializing in luxury real estate in Hilton Head. And because he knows his ideal customers need to make a big financial decision when buying, his primary digital marketing priority includes establishing credibility.
Now, what’s interesting is that John Campbell approaches this task in a few different ways — depending on the social platform he’s using. On networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, he prioritizes educational content — posts that teach followers about what to look for when shopping for real estate and sharing local insights about Hilton Head. On others, his focus is entirely on highlighting social proof, community, and real-life experiences.
For instance, if you look at his Instagram profile, you’ll find it’s filled with educational and promotional posts, including more authentic content that captures the essence of life in Hilton Head. This accomplishes a level of trust that most other content formats don’t. Not because it directly addresses the aspects of local life most other real estate agents ignore. Rather, because it shows that John Campbell has genuine native experience, making him one of the best people to learn and buy from when relocating to the area.
Source: instagram.com
Be the Organization Leads Go to for Fresh Information
Finally, when it comes to producing and distributing truly engaging (and conversion-inspiring) content on social media, it’s crucial not to ignore the potential of educational resources.
These are not only effective at drawing awareness- and evaluation-stage prospects into your marketing funnel. They’re just as good for building trust, establishing competence, and boosting product understanding that drives confident conversion decisions.
But the thing about distributing educational content on social media is that most brands focus on providing evergreen value. Yes, it’s tremendously effective at engaging leads. And you should definitely make it a part of your content marketing strategy. It’s just as important to keep up with relevant industry news and trends — especially if you want to become the business your leads go to for fresh information.
How to Do It Right
- Include both evergreen and time-sensitive content in your content calendar.
- Prioritize topical relevance to ensure your followers receive value from your posts.
- Explore opportunities to explain how specific industry developments affect your followers so that they can extract maximum value from your social media content.
A Real Brand Doing It Right
If you check out Mesothelioma.net, you’ll find that it’s a digital platform dedicated to providing educational, legal, and medical support to individuals with serious illnesses. Because of its area of expertise, Mesothelioma.net has the crucial task of ensuring its followers have all the essential information they need to make positive health and legal decisions. And in many cases, this depends on how informed they are about the latest developments on the topic.
By using its social platforms to distribute mesothelioma-related news, this organization effectively positions itself as the go-to resource for fresh information. This doesn’t just establish credibility and dependability. Much more importantly, it automates how Mesothelioma.net’s target audience finds new info, encouraging them to regularly check the brand’s networks and creating a preference for getting their news from the business.
Source: x.com
Final Thoughts
Creating social media content that’s successful at engaging your target audience doesn’t necessarily require you to follow the latest digital marketing trends. In many cases, the best thing you can do is prioritize covering topics that are hyper-relevant to your ideal customers — they’re guaranteed to take note of you.
The tactics above adopt different approaches to engagement — from relationship-building to inspiring leads to considering your solutions to sharing pertinent information. And all of them can work for your brand. However, to get the most out of these strategies, make sure to test them out on a small scale. That way, you’ll have confirmation that they match your brand’s unique needs and align with what your audience expects from your business online.
After identifying the content that resonates with your followers, you can distribute it across all of your social media channels.
Natasha is a lady of a keyboard and one hell of a geek. She has been working for, and collaborating with, individual clients and companies of all sizes for more than a decade. Natasha specializes in writing about design, branding, digital marketing, and business growth. She is also addicted to art in all its forms and grilled tofu.
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