The anatomy of an effective social media post is a complicated thing, especially since the formula for success is not set in stone. When it comes to Facebook marketing, you want to create engaging content that brings in thousands of interactions without resorting to low-quality clickbait tactics or cheap novelties, right? Well, knowing what to post on social media and how to make that content cater to your audience is a great first step towards that goal, and that’s exactly what we’re going to explore in this article.
We’re going to list and break down different content formats on social media, especially and what each of them is best suited for. Our purpose is not so much to list the best ideas for these post structures, or to offer templates of them, but to analyze them in a bare-bones manner so you can understand each of them better and knowing their potential as it can be applied to your particular ideas. Think of these as the building blocks of all your Facebook content. Let’s see what they are.
1. Image posts
Despite the popularity of video content (which we’ll touch upon further down), images are still the lifeblood of Facebook marketing and the site in general. Why? People can’t get enough of them, and sharing them is the main action that people have on the site. Images can be both amusing and informative, which makes them the perfect conduit to communicate with your audience while entertaining them. You might be wondering what the perfect ratio of text-to-image is or if posting memes counts as engaging content, but let’s take it a step back; you still need to consider what your audience wants from your business and how to communicate that better.
Say, for example, that you run a maid service company. While some humor here and there over a month will be appreciated and add variety to your overall content, too much of it will clash with your page’s purpose, which is to engage with people interested in a professional cleaning service. Instead of funny images, try adding useful infographics, photos of your results, and even some cleaning-related inspiring quotes with eye-catching designs.
2. Text posts
You might think that in today’s ecosystem of oversaturated and flashy Facebook posts, the humble text post would get lost and promptly forgotten. Well, that might be true for some of them, but they still have much use, particularly if you have a smaller but engaged audience that regularly interacts with your brand. Questions are perhaps some of the best ways to get engagement because they invite your audience to interact with the post to speak their minds; you can do the same to ask their opinions on a plan for your business, etc. They’re also handy to give out valuable information that is too complex to condense in a single image. In such cases, pinning the post to the top of your page is a smart move, so that any visitors will see that one post before any others.
3. Video posts
Video has been the hottest thing in social media marketing for a while now, and companies that are not allocating at least some marketing budget into video production are heavily encouraged to do so; we’ve talked about the many reasons for it in the past, so now we will focus exclusively on its anatomy and role in your overall content. Since you already made a video, you want it to be the center of attention in the whole post, so keeping your copy short and to-the-point will help you achieve this. You can break down the video post into four different categories: Promotional videos, testimonials, tips and education, and stories.
Promotional videos are those that will tell your audience something important about your business, from what you do to what hot new deals you’re offering that day. Testimonials give people a chance to hear good things about your business from third parties, giving you extra legitimacy. Tips and education videos are mostly about teaching people a “trade secret” or how to do something, showing them that you care about them beyond just doing business. Finally, casual stories can be anything from live videos from inside your locale or at an event, humanizing your brand and letting them see a little of the real people behind it.
4. Website or blog links
We’re pretty sure that, on top of social media, you have your website and even a blog for your business. This is good because it solidifies your online presence (amongst other things), but you need to remember that they should all lead to each other. If you make an important update to your site or want to promote a particular area of it (such as a new services page), make sure to make a post with the link while making sure that your headline, thumbnail, and descriptive text are all in shape. As for blogs, any new entry has to be a post, and you can even turn older entries into new posts as a “highlight” or to talk about current events.
5. Shared content
This type of post can be, in essence, any of the former four we’ve talked about in this article, but taken from other people’s or companies Facebook profiles. Now, we don’t mean “taken” literally, as that is seen as poor taste in many online communities and can actually get you in some hot water depending on what type of content to share. The proper way to do it is to click on the “Share” button of the post you want, or fully crediting the creators of said content if you’re putting it directly in your post.
Why would you want to share other people’s content on your company’s page? Well, for starters, it makes your brand feel more human and aware of its surroundings. You can share news or interesting blog posts about your industry, or about a social reality that your business is closely related to. As we said, there are no rules, but you can ask yourself this: “Is this something that my company would talk about if it were a person?”
