If your social media strategy is feeling like it needs a boost, integrating lifestyle content can be a great way to spark interest, increasing reach and click throughs on your posts and connecting more with your audience. In this post we’ll look at how you can integrate lifestyle content into your social media strategy.
So what do I mean by “lifestyle” content?
Lifestyle content reflects and brings your buyer persona “to life” in a sense, highlighting interests beyond your product or brand. Think about your buyer or brand persona – everything from your target consumer’s age to what they like to do, where they hang out, etc. Like building any relationship, find out what overall interests or personality traits your target consumer has, and create content to appeal to that part of them.
I get a lot of questions on how to seamlessly integrate lifestyle content into social media strategies. Personally, I like to show images of my workspace (especially my Batman laptop sticker), coffee, books I may be reading and food. These are things that I love, but they also help me connect with my audience beyond just sharing social media tips. Little peeks into my life let my audience get to know me and connect with who I am.
To dive a little deeper into lifestyle content for your brand, you could consider:
Tapping Into Emotions
Think about what you want people to feel – or how your end consumer likes to feel.
A classic example of a brand using emotion to drive lifestyle content is Red Bull – the company constantly organizes exhilarating, daredevil stunts, and they then use imagery from such events on their social accounts, reflecting an active, adventurous lifestyle across their presence.
Leisure
What does your target audience do for fun? A restaurant could use images of friends having a great time at brunch, or the bartender serving a mimosa to reflect that part of their patron’s lifestyle. A running shoe brand could use images of runners on epic runs, or curate images of the world’s best places to run.
As I noted earlier, I sometimes share what business books I’m reading because I’d like to attract people who are into constantly learning and evolving in business.
Related Interests
When you think about your lifestyle content, consider interests that are related to our target audience.
Try this quick exercise:
Fill in the blank: My audience/consumers like my brand and ______.
Build some content highlighting whatever you filled that blank in with. For example, I’m an entrepreneur and I love coffee and apparently so do my readers – so I tend to use images of coffee (in coffee shops or when I make it at home) in my feed.
Sometimes it’s all about the coffee, while other times I use my caption to relate the coffee to promote a course, webinar or blog post.
Common Experiences/Pain Points
Think #BloggerProblems or #AgencyLife. If there’s an experience your target audience shares, then it can be worth letting them know that you’re going through it as well.
Highlighting pain points can help demonstrate that you fully understand their issues, and subsequently, how to solve them.
Behind the Scenes/Workspace
A no fail lifestyle theme is ‘behind the scenes’.
Give your audience exclusive access to your brand. Are you at a cool event that relates to your target market? Share how your team is setting up. This is a great way to build buzz and tease the event or promo.
Do you have special art pieces in your store? Talk about them, and tell the story of why you wanted them in your space. Perhaps a detail photo of stitching on one of your garments will reflect how much care goes into your pieces.
These small elements may seem mundane to you, but they can help show personality to your audience, who don’t get to see you in your everyday setting.
Resources
Share added value pieces with your network – try infographics, downloads, white papers or resources from other leaders in your industry.
Your Community
Sharing information about your community can be a great way to use lifestyle content – especially if you’re a location-based business).
These kind of lifestyle posts help you use location tags and hashtags for more exposure. Getting your community involved is a great way to show people you care about where you’re from and what’s happening around you.
Ask Questions
I like to engage my audience beyond just social media marketing.
Remember that the more you know about your audience the easier it becomes to link your product or service to their interests.
Some extra tips:
Stock images can make great lifestyle posts if you can’t create your own. Use them for text overlays or on their own with a caption.
Use tools like your Instagram Stories or live videos to share lifestyle content. Stories and live videos are perfect for sharing more laid back, ‘in the moment’ content, while your main feed can remain more curated. You can also now share other people’s posts to your Instagram story, while Twitter’s also a great network for sharing lifestyle content since you can share more often without annoying your followers.
Lifestyle content doesn’t require a call to action (although you can sprinkle them in if you want). This kind of content is mainly to give your audience a break from the calls to action, to capture attention, and to show your followers and fans you can relate to the same things they do. This is a chance to show the essence of your brand, and tell your story – without asking your network to do you a favor.
The right balance of lifestyle and call to action content will help you reach more fans, while creating stronger bonds and showing your brand’s personality. Diving a little deeper into sharing lifestyle content can improve your social media success by attracting your ideal customer.
GROW - Social Media Marketing 