TLDR

Tricks that will help you take your posts to the next level...

Whether you despise or adore social media, it is an unavoidable component of online marketing. Brands can bring in new customers, build trust with their audience, and maintain and grow the following they've worked hard to build with an effective social media strategy.

But how many of your followers are active on social media? Facebook is the most popular social media platform, with 2.93 billion monthly active users. Instagram comes in second with 1 billion monthly users, followed by Pinterest with 433 million monthly users and Twitter with 229 million daily active users.

Now, let's break down social media usage into daily activities. How much time does someone spend on social media per day? Every day, people around the world spend about two and a half hours on social media platforms. Remember, this is just the average.

Some will devote significantly more time. That means you have plenty of opportunities to catch someone's attention with a multiplatform social media strategy. But, with ever-changing 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, learning how to better reach your target audience on social media can help you. You'll learn the best tips for creating effective social media post strategies to reach your followers and cultivate new ones.

10 Ideas for Engaging Social Media Posts

1. Conduct Research

Determine which types of content will be most appealing to your target audience. Then, to get your audience talking, post questions.

This can help increase engagement while also allowing you to collect vital information about the types of products your audience prefers, 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 popular topics by highlighting quotes or lifestyle posts that are relevant to your target audience. If your company has a consistent blog on its website, you can take topics from the blog and share them on social media.

This will assist you in establishing authority on the topics you discuss, educating your followers, and attracting more visitors to your website. Another factor to consider is that people enjoy receiving free gifts.

So, experiment with different contests or giveaways that require your followers to like and share the post, as well as tag a few friends. Brands should also consider providing their followers with a behind-the-scenes look at what the brand is up to.

This could include revealing what your company is most passionate about or providing an inside look at product development. When you start researching and experimenting with what your target market likes to see on social media, you will undoubtedly increase your engagement and be able to create more compelling content.

2. Examine Your Competitors

Another straightforward but effective strategy is to observe what your competitors are doing. What exactly are they posting about? What topics are they discussing?

What hashtags are they employing? What strategies are they employing to reach out to the target market? Is their content, for example, performing better on Instagram or Facebook?

On each platform, you can learn from your competitor's social media strategy. You can also see a competitor's trials and errors, allowing you to learn from them and avoid any mistakes they may have made.

3. Maintain 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 lighthearted and enjoyable? Or is it direct and serious? In a brand guide, address the tone and personality of posts to help with content consistency across the website and social media.

Color palettes and fonts that a social media manager should use when posting can also be included in a brand guide. Creating a brand guide can help to alleviate potential problems because it specifies the criteria that should be followed when creating content.

The brand voice should be obvious to ensure the brand guide is effective. When your followers see a post, they should be able to tell what type of business it is. This will help them remember the brand better over time.

4. Relationships should be nurtured.

Whatever brand guide you decide is best for your company, it's critical to keep your posts positive and engaging. Consider each social media platform as a means of telling a story.

Make each post intentional, taking your followers on a journey to learn more about your brand or getting them excited about your products or services. Each post is a touchpoint in their feed that should serve as a positive reminder to keep them interested in the brand.

5. Keep it brief and simple.

While storytelling is important, social media is not the place to pen your next novel. People sometimes use social media as a diary or simply overexplain a topic. However, for most brands, this is not the best path to take.

Long, time-consuming posts may bore your followers and cause them to unfollow your brand. It's critical to keep their attention by keeping your posts short, simple, and to the point. After reading your post, readers should be aware of their next step or CTA (call to action).

6. Include a Strong Call To Action

A CTA, like a post, should be brief, clear, and engaging. While one CTA is required, you can strategically include more than one in a post. Assume you're creating a product post; what if the customer isn't ready to visit your website and make a purchase?

You can send them a blog post about how to use the product or an Instagram Reel of an influencer using the product. A compelling CTA is essential for any type of content, especially on social media, so users don't scroll past yours without knowing why they just read it. CTAs guide people to the next step in the customer journey.

7. Make Use Of Images And Videos

Images, infographics, product images, and videos that are appealing can help increase engagement and interest in your social media content. The good news is that you don't need a large budget to begin posting.

The advancements in today's phones make it easy to take quality product pictures and upload them to social media. Finding the right lighting and angle can help you create stunning images on the fly. It's also simple to invest in high-quality, low-cost backdrops for your photos.

Furthermore, there are numerous resources on YouTube and the internet that can provide helpful tips for taking great photos. While creating original content is critical, it can be difficult for even large brands to maintain.

You can easily purchase online stock images or create graphics on platforms like Canva to help you create numerous social media posts per week.

In a moment, we'll go over some useful social media content platforms. While we're on the subject, it's worth noting that videos are another excellent way to connect with your audience. Brands can use videos to further explain a topic or product, answer important questions, or provide a preview of upcoming events.

One thing social media managers should keep in mind is that when uploading images and videos to social media, the size of each must be checked. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn each have their own set of requirements.

Each platform has recommended image sizes to ensure that customers can see the image clearly on their phones, tablets, and laptops. When an image is a wrong size, the quality suffers, which can hurt your social media engagement. When you upload a post using Meta Business Suites (for Facebook and Instagram content management), it provides the recommended size for images and videos.

8. Post at the Appropriate Time

In addition to content size requirements, post-timing is critical. There are even the best times and days of the week for each industry to post. This may take some trial and error to get right.

If you're new to social media management, you should do your research and experiment with different post frequencies. This will assist you in determining when your target audience is online, as well as 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 most likely recommend the best days and times to post on social media, which can provide a good starting point.

9. Customize Your Posts For The Platform

People use various platforms for a variety of reasons. It's critical to keep this in mind and create posts that are appropriate for the platform.

When it comes to Facebook and Instagram, choosing the right hashtags - and the right number of hashtags - is critical to reaching your current audience while also discovering new ones.

Furthermore, knowing the appropriate type of media to use for each platform, as well as potential topics to discuss, can assist you in growing your audience and engaging with followers on each platform.

10. Create a Social Media Strategy

Content planners are used by social media managers to schedule posts for the week, month, or quarter. This way, everything is set up, and if changes are needed, they can easily edit a post while keeping everything organized across platforms.

While it is critical to plan out posts in order to stay in touch with followers, the plan should be supported by a solid social media strategy. A social media strategy should be based on business objectives as well as the availability of those who will manage the platforms.

It is beneficial to create a standard operating procedure for posting procedures, as well as guidelines for responding to comments and direct messages, to make it easier for anyone managing social media platforms.

Social media practices, like most business practices, will evolve over time. You should use social media insights to determine what works and what doesn't and to inform future strategies. You'll help improve your overall SEO efforts if you combine these tips to create an effective social media strategy.

Conclusion

Social media management is critical for brands looking to expand their audience and reach out to new customers. It's one of the most efficient ways to communicate and keep people informed online.

With Hocalwire's social media auto-posting feature, any news items and articles that match the specified rule will automatically post on the selected social media sites. If you're searching for one, schedule a demo of Hocalwire CMS by booking a time.