WhatsApp Business: Creating engaging content

Enterprise Nation and WhatsApp have joined forces to educate and support small businesses on the benefits of implementing and using technology, such as WhatsApp's free business app.

This e-learning video is part of a free series designed to help small business owners connect with customers, showcase their product/service and respond to customer questions. 

Creating engaging content

The WhatsApp Business app allows you to better engage customers and grow your business in the process. Get useful tips on creating content for the app that will help boost your sales and build trusted relationships with your customer base.

Find out more about Enterprise Nation and WhatsApp's partnership: WhatsApp Business app: How to manage customers and drive sales

Transcript

Hi. I'm Josh from WhatsApp. When it comes to building an audience, content is key. Or let's rephrase that. When it comes to building an audience, quality engaging content is key. This is why in this session, we are going to look at how to develop creative content so that you can achieve better engagement.

The ability to message businesses directly can not only bring new customers, but also strengthen relationships with existing ones. Nearly one in three buyers' surveys say that they chat with businesses in order to determine if they're trustworthy and credible.

Research reveals that ongoing, trusting and personal connections developed with a business via conversations often lead to new interactions, more effective personalised recommendations, and higher spending.

Consumers expect businesses to answer quickly and provide useful answers. Responsiveness is key to building valuable long term relationships.

Today, people don't want to call a business. They don't want to send an email. They want to send a message in an accessible and user friendly way. This can, in turn, drive sales, and therefore, knowing how to construct the message you send your customers is crucial.

Before you start creating content, as we discussed in previous modules, it's important to find what you want to achieve through this content.

Build yourself a brief and outline the key aspects of your business and align your content to it. No one knows your business as you do. You also know your regulars and their motivations.

Try to think of them when creating compelling description of your business and your targets. Having this clarity will allow you to create content that aligns to your business and keeps you focused on the direction you want to head. Here are five questions that you can try out.

• How would you describe your business to a friend?

• What makes your business stand out?

• Who are your customers as people?

• What do you want to tell them about your business, product or service?

• What is the goal of the content?

When creating content, it is important to have your goals and audience in mind. Then you can create visuals and text that work together great, and that is engaging for your customers.

If you get each of these elements right, people will pay attention to your content and your business. Not just anyone, but the people you really want to engage with, your target audience, because you'll be creating content specifically for them. It's always best to be authentic about your business and use images and text that reflect your business and incite emotion.

Let's take a second to go through some perceived barriers we often hear, and let's break them down. Some people may believe they don't have what it takes to be create great content for their business, but it may be due to a lack of equipment, money, knowledge, or confidence.

In truth, the power to be creative is in us all. Think of small triumphs you've had in your business. These are probably thanks to your creativity, daily actions you take to apply your creativity to achieve with more with less. If you're a business owner, you've already done some of these things. You took the challenge, and that involved creativity.

And really, the activities and tools we need to immerse ourselves into content creativity is within our reach. Let's break these perceived barriers down.

• Equipment. All you need is a phone and creativity to get really good images.

• Money. You don't need to hire someone to create content for you. You just need a little practice and to look at what others are doing that appeals to you.

• Confidence. If you don't feel confident about creating your messages and images, then we suggest spending some time looking at what others are doing to get inspired. This could be on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or other social media sharing platforms.

• Knowledge. We've compiled a few tips in this module to help you create great engaging content.

Here are some best practices to consider when use when creating great content.

• Use high-quality photos and videos is paramount to getting people to pause and interact with your content.

• Keep messages simple but attractive. Offering too much content can make your post overwhelming or messy.

• Make messages visually pleasing. Keep a balance between the amount of text and image that you use. Don't overload them.

• Stay focused on what you want to communicate, what the objective of the message is.

• Make content actionable so that your audience will take action on it, like sharing links from your page or website or asking a question.

• The more relatable your content is, the more you'll be able to connect with your audience.

• Keep timing in mind. Regular messages can tell your audience that you're active, legitimate, and care about them as customers.

Let's look at some examples.

When creating content, we recommend keeping a balance between the amount of text and image that you use. As per the example on the left, be concise. Don't try and shove loads of information into your messages.

The message simply says best painters in town. That message in that message, there could be a link to request a booking. Be crisp and clear or short and simple. Stay focused on what you want to communicate or what the objective of the message is. Use a tone that reflects the personality of your business. The example on the right is Organido.

They're reflecting their business personality with a light-hearted, casual, come see us message. Let's now look at a few tips and tricks to follow.

There are many elements you can include in your content. How you decide to mix and match these elements is up to you and the message you want to send across in each opportunity.

Remember, it's better to keep messages simple but attractive. Offering too much content can make your post overwhelming or messy. Don't overload them. You can start by considering text. Even if the picture or video you are sending seems self explanatory to you, consider your text as a headline to your content.

Also, some people may not have automatic downloads activated for their media on WhatsApp, so your headline may be the hook to encourage your recipients to download the media and engage.

Try to make your headline clear and concise. You can even add an emoji. We'll look deeper into this in the next slide.

Adding visual elements is recommended. People are drawn to them. So consider trying to include pictures, videos, GIFs, or stickers. You can include various types of documents like PDFs, GIFs, and in in particular to allow us to express complex messages in a matter of seconds.

And that makes them a powerful strategy for businesses that want to engage with their target audience online.

When sharing GIFs or stickers too, it will help your audience relate to your business on a more personal level. Instead of interacting with a business, they'll feel like they're sharing fun GIFs with a friend. You can also create your own sticker pack. We'll look into this in a few minutes.

Remember, it is best to be crisp and clear on what you want to communicate and keep it brief. Keeping it brief will help focus on what is relevant. To make your text more appealing, consider using fonts and emojis.

• Fonts. Using fonts in different colours and sizes is a good eye catching and simple way to capture attention. You can bold keywords, use italics, change the size, colour and so on. Try not to use a different font and colour all at the same time. Choose one that fits well with your business.

• Emojis. An emoji is a visual representation of an emotion, object, or symbol. There are emojis for hundreds of things such as cakes, drinks, travel, smileys, people, families, hand gestures, clothing, accessories, and so much more. Accompanying your words with emotions, and emoticons can help add emphasis to your words. However, emojis do have a time and a place. They can come across as very casual, so consider whether emoji is the right for your business and try not to overuse them.

Use high-quality pictures and video. Quality is about making sure that your visuals look as good as they should. There are three things to watch out for in terms of quality.

Resolution. Make sure your images are not fuzzy or pixelated. Definition, shaky or blue blurry photos that are not appealing. And file size, keep them light so they can be easily downloaded.

You can avoid the first two of those issues, low resolution and blurry photos, by not taking photos in poorly lit places or the subjects that move too much. If you haven't if you have no choice, then try pushing your camera on a tripod. Or if you're using a camera phone, try resting your phone camera on your hand somewhere. It has to be steady.

You can use a flash when there's not enough light. Most devices have one built in. However, flash can also create lots of shadows, which can be distracting in a photo, so we don't recommend using flash on. Stick to shooting images in well lit places in the subjects that aren't moving too much.

Use good composition. Composition is about the framing, balance, and focus. Getting these right make your images much more appealing. Good composition can greatly enhance the impact on an image, potentially turning an okay image into a great one. Great images have a strong focal point. You are far more like this capturing design if your photo is clear and striking.

When talking about composition, it's important to bear in mind where your image will be seen on your phone. You can try different angles to show off different aspects of the product and use different techniques like video to give fun effects.

Play around with a few ideas, locations and angles, and see what you can do to make pictures creative and fun.

To help compose and balance shots, use rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is about placing or arranging elements within the image in a way that is more visually appealing. It is applied by aligning an element or subject within the guidelines and their intersection points. When shooting or copying a photo, apply or imagine guidelines with intersecting points. Consider what elements are most the most important and position them at or near the intersections of the grid.

Be consistent. This refers to having a visual language for your business so that all of your visual content is recognisable and coherent.

Creating a consistent visual language allows your content to be recognisable and provide a coherent representation of your business. If you have a consistent look to your visuals in the same way that we talked about person, personality, and tone of voice, bringing consistency to your text, you can create diverse visuals that remain true and relevant to your business.

This example is an effective visual language because without knowing anything about them, you can guess from their well created curated and consistent content that their business is about dreams. That is cheerful, creative, and evokes freshness.

Like them, you can look, develop a vision, a theme, visual language, and keep your business recognisable.

Stickers are available on the latest Android and iOS versions of WhatsApp. If you don't see stickers, make sure to update to the latest version of WhatsApp on your phone's app store. You can download additional sticker packs from Google Play and the App Store, or you can create your own.

Try remixing your own assets as well. You can reuse your images using creative apps to enhance them. There are many apps that can help with the layout of images to make them fun. You can try adding text to images and adding additional information. Also, you can look at emphasising colours, cropping, using filters, and many more options, which often come built in already to your phone.

If you use pictures that are not yours, keep in mind it's important to respect intellectual property, so we can recommend make sure that you are legally able to use the imagery. One of the most common downsides of you or businesses that use stock photography or generic images is that they could also be used by another business.

Please remember, good creative is good, no matter the medium. Good creative is relevant creative. Your mobile gives you all the tools, but you need to come up with the idea that can help you deliver on your objectives.

You need to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. If you can do this, you will likely have a stronger connection with your audience.

So before creating content:

• Create a brief and define what you want to achieve through your content.

• Create content that aligns with your audience and your goals.

• Don't fall for creative barriers. The power to be creative is within everyone.

• Remember the best practices. Keep it simple, visually pleasing and actionable.

• Practise techniques, including fonts and emojis.

• Create pictures and videos that are consistent, high quality, well composed and relevant, and remix what you have.

To learn more about the WhatsApp Business App, visit whatsapp.com/business. Thank you.

Find more WhatsApp Business e-learning

• Why is WhatsApp Business so powerful?

• Getting started with WhatsApp Business

• Building your engagement plan

• Using broadcasting messages

• Sharing short links and QR codes