How to Make the Most out of your Content
The essence of an effective social media strategy is all about creating a repeatable posting framework that helps you to receive the maximum impact from the time you spend creating and engaging online. It's really that simple.
The key elements you need first in order to get there?
Identify your goals
Map out your systems
Create a sustainable content routine
Stop waisting time, build a content strategy that works.
What’s your goal?
To develop an effective content strategy the first question we want to ask is: what is your goal?
Are you trying to build awareness? Increase sales? Drive people to an external link? Cultivate community engagement?
If you are aiming at nothing, you will hit nothing. We need to know what we're aiming for in order to throw an arrow at the target. Once we know the answer to this question, we can reverse engineer the outcome.
If you've ever attempted to build an online brand, you probably know first hand how frustrating it can be to spend a ton of time creating content only for no one to see or engage with it.
I'm here to help you get past the frustration and finally taste some of the sweet results you're craving.
Spend some time thinking about what stage of development you're in; it's really hard to make sales when people have no reason to like, trust or care about you.
Maximize your marketing efforts with clear goals and specific outcomes:
1. Build Brand Awareness:
Building brand awareness is all about letting people know you exist. You may or may not be familiar with the marketing "Rule of 7", which suggests someone needs to interact with your brand at least 7 times before taking action. (Modern day marketing numbers have this much higher ranking between 8-20 touches for complex sales in 2025).
What does that mean for you? If you're a small business looking to generate sales but you don't have much of an audience right now, building awareness is the best place to start. This essentially means, we want to start reminding people who you are, what you do, and how you can help them through frequency and repetition. This is a strategy that builds towards sales but doesn't imminently create conversions. It also gains value in compound interest over time. So, the more you post over time, the more awareness you build which helps increase long-term trust and authority in your niche.
2. Increase Website Traffic
Another goal example is to move people off of the platform they're currently viewing something on and to another platform. This could be your website, affiliate links, blog posts, news letters, etc.
You might have this goal as part of a larger lead capture strategy: aka building your email list so you can keep reminding people you exist in their email inbox, one step more personal than a social feed.
This is one method to help increase people coming into your sales funnel and can also help you strengthen engagement rates and SEO across your websites & social platforms.
3. Cultivate an Engaged Community
In 2026, follower count is becoming more of a vanity metric with more opportunities opening for niche creators with smaller audiences. The real value metrics today are in engagement, DM shares and watch time.
Which essentially means, the more time people spend actually watching your content the whole way through & sharing it with their friends, the more perceived value your account has signaled to algorithms & brand partners.
The higher these metrics are, the more opportunities creators have for partnerships.
Choose your Platform(s):
Once you've identified your social media goals for the next 3-6 months, we can get to work on the next part: creating your content strategy.
Once we know what it is we are trying to achieve, the next set of questions we can ask is what platforms and content will help me get the best results for the time I'm spending on socials.
The rule of thumb I would suggest to start your content marketing is pick one long-form platform and one short-form platform.
This is a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone type of approach.
The idea is to create one long-form piece of content that you can put the most amount of thought leadership, valuable, accurate, and in-depth information in. Think YouTube, Podcasts or Blogging. You then take this long form work and break it down into smaller chunks for your short-form content.
This is because people will often find you on a short form platform like Instagram or TikTok. The more they see you on their page over time, the more they build trust with you. The longer exposure someone has to your high-value short form content over time, the more likely they are to migrate over to your long-form platform & explore more of your in depth work.
The sad truth is that it's hard to build a successful online brand in 2026 on just one platform alone. The good news is that doesn't mean we need to double or triple our work load in order to show up in multiple places.
This is where we want to work smarter, not harder.
And thus, where content pillars come into play.
Clean up your strategy & make your content work for you.
Content Pillars:
If you've been in the content marketing world for some time, this is no new concept to you. Some people call them pillars, some people call them bins. The idea is to create specific yet flexible categories related to your niche that you can easily come up with content ideas for over time.
An example from the Squid's Ink Blog is our content bin "Media Club". This is basically my fun space to nerd out on one of my favorite recent pieces of media in popular culture. (Check out next weeks post on Marty Supreme to hear all my thoughts on the most stressful movie experience of 2025.)
The category "Media Club" is broad enough to fit a ton of different topics on a subject I can talk about for hours, days, weeks, months. You get the picture.
It's also purposefully labeled as a Club because it's something mapped out with the intent of creating a space for discourse within our community. The goal? Driving thought leadership & engagement.
Are you starting to get the idea?
Do your Homework:
Before moving onto the next phase in planning your content strategy & building systems, spend some time reflecting and answer these questions:
What is my #1 content creation goal that I can focus on & commit to for the next 3-6 months?
Who am I trying to reach?
What action do I want them to take?
When they’re searching for this type of content, what platforms are they on?
What are 3 topics around my niche I can talk about endlessly.
Remember, content marketing is a long-term game so build your strategy knowing that you will need to stay committed for 3-6 months in order to gain the traction and results you’re looking for. Focus on building brand value over time through consistent high quality content, authentic engagement, building relationships & ultimately trust with your audience. Good things come to those who are disciplined & patient.
Already done with your homework and ready to move onto phase 2? Subscribe to our email list so you never miss a blog post and check out last weeks blog post: How to Rank on Google in 2026 to learn all about increasing your online visibility using SEO best practices.
