When you start creating your content on social media, it can feel like nobody is taking any notice. You’ll get one or two likes from your mum and your best mates which can leave you feeling like you are wasting your time. What you really want is paying customers.

I remember I started working with a Think Tank four years ago. We began managing their Twitter, Facebook pages, and it wasn’t easy. I didn’t understand the complicated subject matter or the audiences’ content needs. They had a particular view of the world and were incredibly selective about the type of information they wanted to receive. Get it wrong; send the wrong message, and they let you know about it. Today, we’ve built a large and focused community who continue to enjoy the content.

As you can guess, it wasn’t always this way. I think even three months into the assignment we were averaging 0-3 likes on posts. Occasionally there would be a spike, but honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if my client had given up on me. I must say, despite low engagement, we were managing to sell out of tickets to the regular events we were promoting. So despite low fan engagement, I must have been doing something right.

Now we get hundreds of follows, likes, shares and engagement daily. Let me share with you what worked.

As I mentioned, the subject matter was complicated, but I was writing the content, so I had to understand it. It helped that we approached different themes each month. We carefully curated theme subjects we knew intrigued our audiences. Even with a small budget, I would create all types of content; questions, video clips, quotes, and articles every single day for the theme. There were different types of content posted for different kinds of people on relevant topics.

I still remember the CEO’s face drop when I mentioned I would be posting four times a day. “Isn’t that too much?” he inquired. “I’ll probably do more than that to be honest because I have faith in what I do,” I replied. In practice, we ended up posting on average eight times a day going up to 12 or more around event times. That way, our audience was exposed to quality content whenever they chose to come online, or the algorithms decided to show it to them. If you were on all day, you would have seen most of the content. And if you only turned up at 11 PM, you’ll get your daily dose of content from this brand.

Quality was always the focus. So having themes to focus on meant we were catering to the needs of the audience. Additionally, this was well-researched content. And the better we got to know our audience and the content they liked, the better we got at giving it to them.

The numbers – how many fans or likes we had were never more important than making sure we created good quality content. When I look back if I had focused on the numbers I probably would have given up myself.

And that’s all folks! Quality content, all of the time on topics your audiences are fascinated with will lead to brand growth. Focus on these three areas. Within a year and a half, we had attracted 10,000 fans before we decided to open the Instagram page. Two years later, this Think Tank has 15000+ and growing fans on Instagram alone. On a small budget, you can achieve the same if not more.

If you would like to create great content, download this five-year editorial content calendar here to help you.