The importance of having fresh, engaging content on social media cannot be overstated. You know that effective social content is the key to driving traffic to your website and converting visitors to paying customers. Your content can be scheduled, published, and managed with Hootsuite. It’s not uncommon for you to be unsure exactly what to publish.
You can demystify social media marketing with this article. Throughout this section, you’ll find more than just the components of a great post. You’ll find ideas for engaging content and guidelines for social networks. This article can be read in any order you choose. To find exactly what you need, choose a topic that interests you.
In order to help you achieve your social media goals, we’ve compiled some proven best practices. Our aim is to help you grow and engage your audience and avoid social media stagnation by exploring the post elements mentioned in Know your post anatomy.
Headlines and captions
Short headlines and longer captions are both options. For a brief explanation of your content, a secondary headline is perfect.
Emojis and special characters
Your brand can become more relatable and interesting with special characters and emojis. Emojis can significantly improve audience engagement, according to recent data. Don’t overdo it, though! Emojis should serve a purpose.
In addition to conveying emotion and adding personality to your brand, emojis can also be used as a simple engagement tool. By adding emojis to separate blocks of text, you can make it easier to read and skim.
You can go a long way with some simple symbols if emojis are too risky:
You can draw the attention of a reader to a link with an arrow or pointing finger.
It is possible to convey excitement or celebration by using stars or starbursts.
Symbols with color associations can emphasize a point, while check marks can imply action.
A call to action
A clear call to action should be at the beginning or end of your posts. On Facebook, for example, you might announce the opening of a new location and offer a reward redeemable at that location for comments. Twitter allows you to simply request retweets. Link to your site, an article, or another site at the very least.
Mentions
In social networking posts, businesses, organizations, contributors, and influencers should be mentioned. Encourage a partner or supporter to reshare your post, or reciprocate with theirs, to increase your mutual exposure. These posts can quickly become more engaging (likes, comments, and shares) and even influence algorithms that push your content to the top.
Using hashtags
A hashtag is a combination of words or phrases preceded by the # symbol. In addition to identifying content and brands, concepts, themes, and trends, you can also use them to identify campaigns. After you publish your post on social media, it becomes searchable on social media, making it more discoverable and pulling your brand into trending topics.
Any user who clicks on a hashtag on a social network or conducts a hashtag search on the network sees all the posts containing that hashtag.
Visuals
Social media is an inherently visual medium, and visual content plays a critical role in enhancing engagement. There is statistically more clicks, shares, and comments on visual posts than on text-only posts.
Make your posts more attractive and valuable by using photos, images with text overlays, and videos. Adding a visual element is not necessary for all posts, but pay attention to how images affect engagement and adapt your strategy accordingly.
All your social content doesn’t have to be created from scratch! The social media community within your organization is an excellent source of content. A good way to uncover valuable assets is to evaluate your organization’s own content as well as media from reputable external sources. These assets can then be repurposed or reshared to keep your audience engaged.
External content
You can further engage your audiences by sharing external content, building trust as an industry leader, and filling in content gaps with external posts.
Internal content
There is a wealth of content within your organization that can be leveraged on your social channels. A how-to article, a blog post, a press release, a marketing presentation, and a promotion, for example, can all be repurposed as social media content.
Whenever you’ve got a long piece of content, such as a brochure, think about breaking it up into bite-sized posts. Make a Top 10 list out of a detailed blog post. Consider turning a how-to article into a Tips and Tricks article. You can track the performance of this reused content to gain a deeper understanding of your audience and tailor future content accordingly.
There is a wide variety of social networks that people use to accomplish different goals. Their behavior between social platforms can also differ significantly. You can reach more customers by understanding how people use various social media platforms.
You will learn about the audience profile for each of the most popular social networks, the type of content that keeps them engaged, and some specific best practices.
Social networks aren’t all necessary for you to use. It can save you valuable time and effort to research which social networks your target audience prefers
It is important to keep your audience interested and engaged by offering a variety of content. The content pillars of education, entertainment, inspiration, and promotion can help you plan content for different purposes.
Plan what and when to publish your content once you know what it should accomplish. Maintain your brand voice and facilitate engagement by mixing up your content using the four content pillars.
The question of what and where to publish is often followed by the question of “When should I publish?” The answer varies depending on the social network and industry.
The best times to publish view in Analytics suggests the best times to publish based on the posts from the previous 30 days. Depending on your goals, such as brand awareness or engagement, these suggestions can help you reach your goals. Our recommendations include publishing your content to your Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, Instagram business accounts, LinkedIn profiles, and LinkedIn pages.