The title for this post could have easily been, “Writing the Best Post for Each Social Media Channel,” but creating a highly-effective and memorable social media post is a craft of its own. Post the wrong message and you won’t gain new followers (or worse, lose them), and share a post on the wrong channel and your business will seem “behind with the times.”
If your business doesn’t have a social media presence, it’s time to start dedicating some time to it. Social media has quickly become the way a brand shows its personality while interacting with its fans, and although it may be easy to auto-post the same thing to all of your social media channels, people consume content on each social channel differently.
Let’s take a look at what the perfect post looks like for the big three social media channels (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) and how your business can craft the best message for each of these audiences.
For businesses, Facebook is a must for social media outreach. However, an average of 1,500 stories are filtered a day from ever reaching a user’s News Feed. Here are the best practices to ensure your Facebook posts break free from the filtered stories:
- Include photos – These still remain the most engaging posts for Facebook. Just make sure they’re of good quality and you aren’t posting a photo for the sake of engagement – make it relevant.
- Use different punctuation – A study from TrackMaven showed that using different punctuation can produce different results. Posts that include hashtags see 60% more interaction, those that include exclamation points have 2.7% more engagement, and question marks increase post engagement by 23%.
- Shorten your link titles – Aim to keep your link titles under 100 characters, as it will get cut off at 101 characters. Use a link shortener platform like Bitly to both shorten the link and track the link’s activity.
- Publish at the right time – According to the same study by TrackMaven, posts that are published between 5 p.m. and 1 a.m. see up to 11% more interaction than those posted during work hours. Even more, posts that go live between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. see 29% more engagement! Also, posts will see almost 25% more interaction when posted on a Sunday versus a weekday.
This social media channel sees over one billion new tweets a week. Your business can get the exposure it deserves, even with all the chirping (see what we did there?), by following these best practices:
- Keep your tweets short – Yes, even though tweets are already limited to 140 characters, the sweet spot should be around 120-130 characters. Plus, if you provide extra character space, it will allow users to retweet your tweets without cutting out any of you copy.
- Use #hashtags cautiously – Even though this platform is where the infamous pound sign became better known as a hashtag, don’t add “#” in front of every other word. Keep it to a maximum of two hashtags per tweet. Use them sporadically, as they may have a negative impact on your tweets.
- Upload correctly-sized photos – For the best image appearance for user’s Twitter feed, size your photos to be 400 x 200 pixels.
- Don’t share Instagram photos directly – If you have an active Instagram account, post the photo separately to Twitter; do not auto-post! If you do auto-post, your followers will have to click on a link to view the photo and be directly off of Twitter. Plus, when directly uploading, it will receive much more engagement (about five times more!) than auto-posted photos.
If your goal is to keep up with industry professionals and cater to potential new employees, a business LinkedIn account is a great platform for you! This channel is very different than others, so keep these tips in mind:
- Shorten links and link descriptions – If you can help it, keep your link titles to less than 70 characters and link descriptions to under 250. This is so they don’t get cut off and shown incorrectly.
- Aim to post once a day – According to LinkedIn, companies that post about 20 times a month will reach about 60% of your audience.
- This is not Facebook or Twitter – This is one of the biggest tips to keep in mind. Your audience is not on LinkedIn to see a funny video of cats dancing or a meme about doing laundry. Too many times do businesses try to show their “quirky” personality on this channel; this is why you have Facebook or Twitter. Keep your posts professional and related to your business/industry or about work life in general.
Start dominating social media with these tips for crafting the perfect social media posts. If you have any questions about social media for businesses, give us a shout today!
