How to Make Impactful, Engaging Content For Your Direct-to-Consumer Brand

As Founder and CEO, Sana wears many hats, including that of a social media manager, and has spent time testing and learning social strategies to refine her knowledge of what works. Watch Sana's episode and read on for best practices and resources that will help you get started with impactful content creation.

1. Invest in your photography and brand visuals.

Like many founders, Sana started out doing every job on her own, including playing the part of photographer and shooting all of the photos for her Instagram and Facebook feeds. As her business matured, Sana started investing more heavily in making her product speak for itself with beautiful visuals by hiring outside help. “If your Instagram is your storefront, you want your storefront to look good,” Sana says. “As soon as you can afford it, it's definitely in all of our interests to start hiring experts.”

Business owners like Sana need look no further than Facebook and Instagram to start getting connected with photographers and creators. Building these networks can be as simple as sending an introductory direct message (DM). If you’re interested in learning more, tap into our Creator’s network to start building partnerships with people who inspire you.

2. Let your audience inform your content.

Crowd-sourcing is a simple way to get new content ideas and learn what your customers are looking for. Sana learned helpful insights by asking her audience what they wanted to see in the comments section of her posts. “We found that what our community most wanted from us was ideas and inspiration of how to use these spices, in addition to knowing where the spice came from and who grew it,” says Sana. From there, she started to introduce more recipe content and share deeper, more nuanced stories on her Page.

Learn more about building community through posts, stories, comments and messages.

3. Make your social media posts shoppable with Facebook and Instagram Shops.

Shops is a mobile-first shopping experience where businesses can easily create an online store on Facebook and Instagram for free. Once you have a shop set up, you can then start tagging products in your social media posts with a feature called Product Tags, which can help drive purchases or let your audience know about a product.

Sana started to support all of her content with Product Tags this year and found it to be a useful feature for tying the business and the product to deeper storytelling elements. “Linking to the product [in our social media posts] hasn't taken away from the depth of the story we're telling,” says Sana. “If anything, it's just strengthened that connection because it's leading people exactly where we want them to get.”

Learn how to set up your shop and then get started with tagging products on your Page.

If Sana's story inspired you, take your social skills to the next level with our social media management course, created in partnership with online course provider Coursera. You’ll receive a shareable certificate upon completion.