Hate it or love it, social media is an unavoidable part of online marketing.
With an effective social media strategy, brands can bring in new customers, nurture trust with their audience, and maintain and grow the following they’ve spent time building.
But how many followers are actually active on social media?
Facebook alone has 2.93 billion monthly active users, making it the most popular social media platform.
Instagram is next with 1 billion monthly users, Pinterest has 433 million monthly users, and Twitter has 229 million daily active users.
Now, let’s break social media down to daily use.
How long does someone spend on social media each day?
People around the world spend about two and a half hours on social media platforms every day.
And remember: that’s just the average.
Some will spend far more time.
That means there’s ample opportunity to catch someone’s eye with a multiplatform social media strategy.
But, with everchanging algorithms across social media platforms, creating a content plan can be a challenging task to get right.
And whether you’re a local or international brand, you can benefit from learning how to better reach your audience on social media.
Here, you’ll learn the best tips to create effective post strategies across social media to reach your followers and cultivate new ones.
10 Tips To Create Engaging Social Media Posts
1. Do Your Research
Figure out the different types of content that will resonate best with your target audience.
Then, try posting questions to get your audience talking.
This can help increase engagement while enabling you to gather essential information about what kind of products your audience likes best, questions they may have about your brand, and insight into what they’re interested in learning about when it comes to your brand.
You can also try expanding on some trending topics by highlighting quotes or lifestyle posts that best connect with your target market.
If your brand has a consistent blog on its website, you can leverage topics you’ve discussed in the blog and share those across social media.
This will help you build authority on the topics you discuss, educate your followers, and bring more people back to your website.
Another thing to consider is that people like getting free stuff.
So, try creating different contests or giveaways that require your followers to like and share the post, and have them tag a couple of friends.
Brands should also think about giving their followers a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on with the brand.
This could mean sharing what your company is most passionate about, or an inside peek at product development.
Once you begin researching and exploring what your target market likes to see on social media, you’ll surely increase your engagement and be able to create more compelling content.
2. Look At Your Competition
Another simple yet effective strategy is to see what your competitors are doing.
What are they posting about? What topics are they talking about?
Which hashtags are they using?
What tactics are they using to connect with the target market?
For example, is their content performing better on Instagram or Facebook?
You can learn from your competitor’s social media strategy on each platform.
Additionally, you can see a competitor’s trials and errors – so you can learn from them, and avoid mistakes they might have made.
3. Stick To Brand Voice
If the company you are creating content for doesn’t have a brand or tone guide, it’s time to create one.
Is the brand playful and fun? Or direct and serious?
Addressing the tone and personality for posts in a brand guide can help with the consistency of content across the website and social media.
Other aspects you can add to a brand guide are color palettes and fonts that a social media manager should use when posting.
Developing a brand guide can help alleviate potential problems since it specifies the criteria someone should adhere to when creating content.
To ensure the brand guide is effective, the brand voice should be obvious.
When your followers see a post, they should know exactly what business they are looking at.
This will help them better remember the brand over time.
4. Nurture Relationships
Whatever brand guide you decide is best for the business, it’s important to remain positive and engaging throughout your posts.
Think of each social media platform as a way to tell a story.
Make sure each post is intentional and takes the followers on a journey to learn more about your brand, or gets them excited about your products or services.
Each post is a touchpoint that comes across their feed and should be a positive reminder that keeps them interested in the brand.
5. Keep It Short And Simple
While storytelling is critical, social media isn’t a place to write your next novel.
Sometimes, people treat social media as their diary, or simply overexplain a topic.
But for most brands, this isn’t the appropriate route.
Long, time-consuming posts can leave your followers disinterested and may lead them to unfollow your brand.
Yikes.
It’s imperative to hold their attention by keeping your posts short, simple and clear.
After someone reads your post, they should know their next step or CTA (call to action).
6. Add A Compelling CTA
Like a post, a CTA should be short, clear, and engaging.
While including one CTA is essential, you can strategically place more than one in a post.
Let’s say you’re making a product post – what if the customer isn’t ready to visit your website and buy?
You can direct them to a blog about how to use that product, or to an Instagram Reel featuring an influencer using the product.
A compelling CTA is crucial to any form of content, especially on social media, so users don’t scroll on to other posts without knowing why they just read yours.
CTAs help direct people to their next step on the customer’s journey.
7. Use Images And Videos
Appealing images, infographics, product pictures, and videos can help increase engagement and interest in your social media content.
The good thing is you don’t need a large budget to get started posting.
The advancements in today’s phones make it easy to take quality product pictures and upload them to social media.
Getting the right lighting and angle can help you create stellar images on a dime.
It’s also easy to invest in quality, inexpensive backdrops for your pictures.
In addition, numerous resources on YouTube and across the web can provide helpful tips for taking great photos.
While creating original content is incredibly important, it can be challenging to maintain for even large brands.
To help create numerous social media posts a week, you can easily purchase online stock images or create graphics on platforms like Canva.
We’ll talk more about helpful social media content platforms in a minute.
While we’re on the topic, it’s valuable to mention that videos are another great way to connect with your audience.
Brands can use videos to further describe a topic or product, answer important questions, or show a sneak peek of upcoming events.
One important thing to note for social media managers is that when uploading images and videos to social media, it’s necessary to check the size of each.
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have their own specifications.
Each platform has recommended sizes to ensure the image is clear when customers view it on their phones, tablets, and laptops.
If an image is the incorrect size, the quality may be negatively impacted, which can hurt your social media engagement.
Tip: If you use Meta Business Suites (for Facebook and Instagram content management), it provides the recommended size for images and videos when you upload a post.
8. Post At The Right Time
On top of content size specifications, post timing is also important.
There are even best times and days of the week to post for each industry.
This may take some trial and error to get right.
If you’re newer to social media management, it’s important to do your research and test different post frequencies.
This will help you determine when your audience is online, and the best days to get the most views and interactions.
If you use Meta Business Suites or other social media content management platforms, they will likely suggest the best days and times to post on social media, which can give you a place to start.
9. Tailor Posts To The Platform
People go to different platforms for different reasons.
It’s important to keep that in mind and ensure you are creating posts that fit the platform.
When it comes to Facebook and Instagram, selecting the correct hashtags – and the right number of hashtags – is crucial to make sure you’re reaching your current audience and finding new ones.
Additionally, knowing the right type of media to use for each platform, and potential topics to discuss, can help you grow your audience and engage with followers on each platform.
10. Create Your Social Media Strategy
Social media managers use content planners to schedule posts for the week, month, or quarter.
This way, they have everything set up, and if adjustments need to be made, they can easily edit a post while keeping everything organized across platforms.
While it’s crucial to plan out posts to stay connected with followers, the plan should be backed by a sound social media strategy.
A social media strategy should be based on business goals and the availability of the people who will be managing the platforms.
To make it easier for anyone managing social media platforms, it’s helpful to create a standard operating procedure for the posting procedures, and guidelines for responding to comments and direct messages.
Like most business practices, social media practices will evolve over time.
You should utilize social media insights to see what’s working and what’s not, and inform future strategies.
Once you combine these tips to create an effective social media strategy, you’ll also help improve your overall SEO efforts.
Helpful Social Media Content Creation Platforms
A social media content creation platform such as Canva can help content marketers and social media managers better use their time.
It’s about working smarter, not harder.
These platforms often have creative templates and ideas that you can customize to your liking when creating posts.
They are especially helpful when it comes to simple posts such as a quote or question posts.
They even have easy templates for holiday posts, and with a couple of quick tweaks, you can celebrate the holidays with your followers.
If you want to check out a couple more social media content platforms before committing to one, try these five best Canva alternatives:
Final Thoughts
Social media management is crucial for brands to grow their audience and reach new customers.
It’s one of the most effective ways to communicate online and keep people informed.
With that in mind, it’s critical that brands do their research, establish a tone guide, and create a social media strategy that equips their employees or freelancers with the tools they need to cultivate an audience from the target market.
If you stick to these social media posting tips and become as adaptable as the everchanging algorithms of social media, you will see results backed by social media insights and metrics.
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Featured Image: Master1305/Shutterstock
