How To Create Content That Sells & Converts On Social Media [Ep. 77]

Updated on March 24, 2024

By Jessie Festa. This guide on how to write content that sells contains affiliate links to trusted partners!

Struggling to create content that sells? Tired of publishing social media posts that don’t actually lead to blog business growth?

Well, you’re in luck, as in this episode of The Profitable Travel Blogger Podcast, we’ll be focusing on how to create content that helps you increase your income!

By the end of this episode, you’ll have an in-depth social media strategy mapped out. More specifically, you’ll learn:

A step-by-step process for time-saving, captivating content creation on social media
How to create content that drives sales, affiliate clicks, and email subscribers
Tips for strategically creating content that increases sales
Ideas for repurposing blog articles into social posts
How to use social media to create genuine connections with your audience
A few powerful social media post templates that get results
And more!

In short, you’ll snag a full step-by-step strategy for creating social media content that helps you increase your income.

Table of Contents

How To Create Content That Sells & Converts [Podcast Episode Audio]

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Myths related to monetizing a blog (that may be holding you back!)
Strategies for creating profitable content (so those blog posts, emails & social shares lead to income!)
Tips for earning recurring passive revenue as a blogger (so your income grows even when you’re away from your laptop!)
How to create products that you know your audience will buy (so you don’t waste your time!)
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how to create content that sells and converts on social media

How To Create Content That Converts On Social Media [Episode Transcript]

*Note: This is the edited-down and paraphrased version of the episode on how to write content that converts on social media. For the full episode, listen to the audio version linked above.

As travel bloggers, we’re constantly creating new content – typically sharing about our trips with our audience; but, are you also considering how to create content that truly grows your blogging business?

This is exactly what we’ll be discussing today, with a focus on creating content for social media marketing.

And I’m so excited to introduce today’s guest, Hailey Rowe, a Marketing/Sales Consultant, Coach, & Linkedin Lead Generation Service Provider.

Hailey has helped hundreds of clients with creating content that truly helps them market and monetize their businesses, and today she’ll be sharing her best social media tips for bloggers with us.

The goal: that by the end of the episode, you have a step-by-step strategy for creating content that increases your income in place. If you’re curious about how content marketing for sales works, you won’t want to miss it!

1) Thank you so much for taking the time to share your content selling tips! To start, can you tell us more about yourself and your business?

I am a marketing and sales strategist and coach, and also a LinkedIn lead gen service provider. Specifically, I help clients grow their visibility with things like collaborations and partnerships. Additionally, I help them grow their clientele.

Often, people have a passion or something they love doing, but they don’t know how to monetize it or market it.

That’s where I come in. I help them find strategies that work for their personality type and their strengths.

One big thing that a lot of my clients do to nurture their audience is create content. So I’m excited to be talking about that today.

2) What does it mean to create content that sells, particularly when speaking to bloggers? And what types of content are we talking about here?

Developing social media content offers a way for your audience to get to know you without you being active with them in person, on the phone, or on a webinar.

You want to have a well-rounded strategy where you are hitting all of the hesitations that they may have about buying your product or service – or clicking your affiliate link, grabbing your opt-in freebie, or doing another call-to-action.

We don’t want to just craft social media posts sharing tips or sharing about our personal lives. Instead, aim to address beliefs, concerns, or objections holding your potential customers back from buying whatever it is you’re selling or taking the action you want them to take.

When it comes to how to create content for social media that addresses these beliefs, concerns, and objections, there are specific types of posts you can use like:

Cool Factor Posts. These are posts that establish you’re credible, that you know what you’re talking about, and show off your expertise in your field. When it comes to social media for bloggers, this is definitely one type of post you’ll want to add to your content plan.

Social Proof Posts. You don’t only need to show that you’re credible, but also that whatever it is you’re offering or selling has brought people results in the past.

Value-Based Posts. This is probably what you’re already doing. You’re already sharing useful content on your blog, and you can repurpose some of the tips you’re sharing there into your social media content.

Storytelling Posts. Maybe you can elaborate on a story that led you to write your current blog that you want to send traffic to, or maybe you can tell a story about the affiliate product you’re marketing and how it worked for you.

If you’re looking for tips for selling products, you can use these types of posts to promote your own offerings too. Note that along with social posts, storytelling emails are also powerful.

Promo Posts. These types of social media posts get straight to the point about what you’re selling. For instance, you might say “Hey guys, I’ve just launched a new digital project. Here is what it is.” These are less common, as you shouldn’t be straight selling to your audience every day.

Engagement Posts. These are meant to increase audience engagement with your social media content. For instance, get your audience to answer a question, share or save your post, or tag someone in it who would relate to what you’re sharing.

These types of posts are really good for growing your audience as they tend to get seen by more people thanks to additional shares as well as the algorithm, which looks at engagement as a signal that the content is valuable.

Objection Busting/Belief Shifting Posts. In these types of social media posts, you’re really helping people to overcome objections – such as objections to the price or believing they won’t actually see results.

Gap Posts. This type of social media content shows an existing gap related to your topic and a possible solution. So sometimes our audience doesn’t even know they need to be educated on a problem that they have, or maybe they kind of feel like they have a problem, but they haven’t been able to articulate it and haven’t been able to see that there’s a possible solution.

In this instance, you might have some educational posts that bring this to light for them. One example social media template is “Have you ever experienced [ISSUE]? Then [PROBLEM] might be the problem!”

3) Do you have any tips for how to write content that sells?

Here’s some advice for how to create great content. Always ask yourself 3 questions:

What do I want people to know?
How do I want people to feel?
What do I want people to do?

If you infuse these questions into your social media content, your posts will naturally improve.

Also, don’t get overwhelmed with all of these different content types. Simply ask yourself, “How can I use a few of these different types of social media posts to get started?”

4) I know you have a framework for creating profitable content. So, can you share your process for developing 30 days of content that sells?

Here is how you can create a month’s worth of content for social media posts that bring results:

Step #1) Choose your content pillars. These are the topics or themes that you want to be known for. I recommend choosing 3, though you can choose a maximum of 5.

Step #2) Break your content pillars down into post ideas. Now let’s move into the ideation phase of our content creation for social media strategy. For each pillar, you want to come up with 10 ideas for social media posts you can share with your audience.

To do this, consider 10 struggles, concerns, or challenges that may be holding people back in relation to each content pillar.

Step #3) Choose your headlines. From this list, choose one headline or prompt that you can give each to make a social post out of it. I encourage you to choose a headline that either has a number, generates curiosity, or shows how to alleviate your audience’s concerns. For instance, “3 ways to make friends while traveling solo” could be a headline.

Step #4) Pinpoint how each social post can help you reach your blogging goals. In this step, you’re choosing a call-to-action for each post. This might mean having them grab your free resource library email opt-in, take a personality quiz that gets them onto your email list, read a new blog post, watch a new video, click over to a sales page to learn about your product, or something else.

Step #5) Choose how you’ll deliver each post. Finally, for each post, you want to decide the best way to share the content. Maybe you do it as a carousel, a video, a live, a text-based post, or something else. You can also take one idea and create content across platforms for it – which is encouraged so that as many people as possible see your message.

It’s recommended to batch each post type to get into a flow and save time. So create all of your written posts at once, then all of your vertical videos, etc. This is one of my top tips when it comes to social media marketing for bloggers who want to streamline their workflow.

5) What are some examples of opportunity-generating content?

Opportunity-generating content is content that leads to new email subscribers and new leads.

I call these pre-offer posts, as they promote the opt-in freebie you offer your audience before you put your paid offer in front of them. They offer a way to make your content presell your paid offerings.

For each freebie, aim to create 10 different social posts that generate curiosity. Within these posts, highlight different benefits of your freebies and different things they’ll learn. This works to keep your social content fresh, plus different parts of your freebie will resonate with different people.

Note that opportunity-generating social content isn’t just about sharing your opt-in freebie. You could also share things like promoting a giveaway on your blog or creating a bundle giveaway with other content creators where you all add resources to a bundle and promote it as a group.

You also want to think about how you can share these in unique ways across your different social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, your Facebook group, etc.

Think about your calls to action too. For instance, you might say something like “Comment #TravelHacks to get my free travel hacking cheat sheet.”

6) When you have people leave comment on a social post with a specific hashtag, are you using an AI chatbot to deliver the promised freebie?

While you can definitely use AI Chatbots – like ManyChat, for instance – I find value in personally delivering the freebie to them in the DMs. This allows me to add a personal note.

It’s beneficial to have genuine conversations with your audience on social media. This way, you can also learn more about what they’re looking for and how you can serve them.

7) What is a creative idea for increasing engagement on social media posts?

Consider creating a content series where each post builds on the previous one.

At the end of each post, you can have a cliffhanger like “Stay tuned for tomorrow where I’ll be talking about [TOPIC]. Comment below if you want to be tagged in the post!”

This can help boost your reach and engagement.

8) What’s a step that people often miss when posting on social media?

Here are a few social media mistakes bloggers and entrepreneurs often make:

Acknowledging their audience. Here is a social media tip: When somebody new follows you, send them a thank you note and a welcome message so they know what to expect and that you’re open to hearing their questions.

For instance, let’s say you’re engaging on Instagram. You might say “Thanks for being a part of my Instagram community. I would love to hear more about you.” And then ask an intentional question that either allows you to get to know what they need or invites them to grab your opt-in freebie.

Think about what you could do to make your followers feel noticed and personally engage with them. They’re going to be way more likely to convert as well as read your future posts and all of that if you have developed a more personal relationship with them.

Creating a sustainable schedule. Instead of spreading yourself thin posting every day, start with 2-3 posts per week so that you can get into a groove and find your voice. From there, you can increase your social media posting schedule if needed. This can help you actually enjoy social media and not feel overwhelmed by it.

9) What are some tips for structuring social media posts?

Let’s dive into how to create good content. First of all, you always want to remember that people have an attention span of about 3 seconds, so the most important thing to perfect is your hook or your headline. This is what people see first, and is what is going to stop them in their scroll and make them want to read/watch/listen further.

One area where people often go wrong is in a live video they sit around for 5 minutes waiting for people to join, but then you’ll immediately lose those who tuned in early.

After the hook, you want to agitate the problem or give them a reason to keep reading/watching/listening.

From there, you’ll share the meat of the post. This is where you share the actual tips, lesson, or story that you’re promising in the hook or headline.

Finally, you want to give the call to action.

That is a kind of general order to follow when writing social media posts. There are also loads of other copywriting formulas you can use to structure your posts, a few of which include:

Discrediting Limiting Beliefs. For this social post, you might present the quote someone hears when they’re limiting belief is showing up, or share the limiting belief in some kind of hook. And then from there, you want to discredit the limiting belief with proof. So instead of sharing why this limiting belief isn’t true, consider how you can show it. And then you want to invite your audience to do the call-to-action or engage in some way.

Before After Bridge. This social media copywriting formula weaves in storytelling by having you share your before and after story in relation to your product or niche. You share how you started from the bottom, what challenges you faced, and how you found solutions.

The bridge part of the formula is where you insert your product, an affiliate link, an opt-in freebie, or some kind of offer as a way for people to also overcome a similar challenge.

The AIDA Formula (Attention – Interest – Desire Action).

Attention = your attention-grabbing hook
Interest = creating more interest in the post
Desire = what makes them want to achieve this dream outcome or do your call-to-action
Action = the call to action

As you can see in all of these social media templates, when it comes to how to create social media content for business, it’s important to include a call to action.

Another tip for structuring your posts is to think about what you already have written in your blog posts and repurpose some of that content. You can also take a piece of long-form content – like a blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video – and pull out one point to expand on through social media. In fact, a blog post featuring 10 tips can be 10 different social posts.

This can help you create content faster.

10) What are some ideas bloggers can use to grow an audience with this creative content strategy we’ve discussed?

Consider how you can collaborate with others to get in front of each other’s audiences. For example, you might host an Instagram Live with another blogger. When you go live, both of your audiences will be notified, which can help improve the reach of the post.

You might also swap emails promoting each others’ freebies, be guests on each others’ podcasts, share about each others’ product launches, or become affiliates for each other and host webinars for each others’ audiences to promote your products.

Tip: When collaborating, find bloggers who share your audience but who don’t have competing products.

Follow up audience questions and concerns by writing a social media post. So if you sent a welcome message to a new follower and they shared a problem they’re facing, you might create a piece of content to address that and then send it to them.

You could say something like “This post reminded me of our conversation so I wanted to share it with you.”

This is a great way to build deeper connections with your audience and build audience loyalty.

Reach out to potential partners on social media. You can let them know that you’re open to collaborating.

11) How do bloggers measure the success of their content? What Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should they be tracking?

The first thing to define is what you’re trying to accomplish.

Are you trying to grow traffic to your blog?
Are you aiming to get email subscribers?
Are you trying to get people to buy an affiliate product?
Are you attempting to get people to enroll in a course you created or purchase another product or service from you?
Something else?

Depending on your social media posting goal, the KPI will be different. It might be email signups, sales, affiliate conversions, or something else.

It’s important to track these KPIs. For instance, if you collaborate with another blogger to swap emails promoting your opt-in freebies, create a tracking link that lets you know how many new subscribers the collaboration brought you. This will help you identify key partners you may want to reach out to again to collaborate with.

12) Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom on creating content that sells! Before we sign off, can you let everyone know where they can find you?

Alright, now I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you feel inspired and empowered to create content for social media that leads to sales and conversions.

Don’t forget to grab access to the free 10 Ways To Make Money Travel Blogging workshop. If you’re looking to monetize your blog, this powerful training can help.

And of course, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes sharing these bite-sized strategies for bloggers who want to turn their blogs into profitable full-time blogging businesses.

Happy blogging!

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