How to Keep Your Content Feeling Fresh Each Social Media Platform
Written by Social Summer Camp intern, Breanna Salinas.
In the world of marketing, social media is comprised of huge platforms that many businesses use to promote their services or products. Successful accounts are able to deliver content that makes their followers engaged.
Your social media relevancy relies heavily on your content. The most challenging obstacle for planning a social media strategy is making content appropriate for its platform. It can be difficult to make sure your content is both engaging and effective. Each platform has it’s own language, so by modifying your posts to fit the culture of each social platform, it could be beneficial to your social media strategy.
How do you keep your social media accounts relevant to your audience, appropriate for each platform and generally active? Hoard your content and get organized. Gather images, gifs or videos and sort them into files on your computer so that they’re always ready for use. Being organized allows you to schedule posts from a pool of images. Creating captions or posts that are relevant, timely and personable are just as important as the visuals.
We’ve broken down the common culture of each platform that’ll help you make strategic decisions when coming up with a social media plan or calendar for your brand. Here are some tips that can help with your creative process on posting fresh content based on the platform:
Facebook is the standard social media platform that more than half of the world’s population is on. Whether you love Facebook or hate it, it’s here to stay, so being able to perform well with an audience is essential for your brand. Something to keep in mind when posting on Facebook is the common tone of posts. Facebook tends to feel much more personal than other sites, so creating that relationship with consumers or an audience will be important.
Tips for creating fresh content on Facebook:
- Adding Visuals: Both are equally as important when creating content for Facebook. This gives you room to be creative with your content and not overuse one or the other. Using photos, videos or gifs along with your posts could help enhance the quality of your content.
- Using Links: Linking to external articles can be helpful and informative to your audience and could help you gain engagement if you are all out of ideas for content. Only link to articles if they are relevant to your business or organization.
- Personality: Facebook is the platform to be personable, otherwise your audience might scroll right past your post! Posts can include photos that represent your brand’s personality, behind the scenes of your business and images of your staff. These photos should give your audience a different perspective of your organization or business, but always be sure to your best foot forward.
Twitter is a micro-blogging social media that tends to be challenging to create successful content for because of its character limit. The 140 character limit – that has now changed to 240 characters – means that creators have to be unique when delivering meaningful messages. Twitter also utilizes hashtags, which create a link that unites Twitter users who are interested in a particular topic or community. Hashtags lead people to read your tweet, and possibly follow you. Twitter tends to be casual, immediate and straight to the point.
Tips for creating fresh content on Twitter:
- Visuals: Adding videos, photos, graphics or gifs instantly makes your timeline or posts in general more attractive. It can boost your potential to have it shared across multiple channels.
- Hashtags: When you’re all out of captions or posts to write, use visuals and pair it with hashtags. Be sure to use hashtags to connect to new potential followers and aren’t just throwing away characters.
- Direct audience to your blog: If you’re writing a blog related to your business or a blog for your website, should push your followers to read it. Direct your audience to your blog through a post. Images directing people to a particular post or your blog could potentially increase engagement.
Instagram is a photo-sharing social platform that is strictly visual-based. It is one of the best platforms for creativity that lets an image speak a thousand words. This means that having lengthy captions isn’t required. When it comes to creating posts, your main concern should only be the quality of your image, gif, video or social graphic. Similar to Twitter, hashtags are important on Instagram, but minimal is key on this platform. Instagram tends to be fun, engaging and extremely creative.
Tips for creating fresh content on Instagram:
- Graphics: Adding videos, photos, social graphics or gifs instantly makes your status update more attractive, plus, it boosts your potential to have it shared across multiple channels. Take the time to enrich a post with a photo or a video you’ve created – you’ll be surprised at the increased levels of engagement you’ll see as a result.
- Quotes: Stuck on what to make your next caption or post about? Look for inspiration from quotes that can be paired with a photo from your gallery of images.
- Regram: Find something you like on another person’s account that is relevant to your business? It’s ok to repost that image, but make sure to credit the creator or source or ask their permission first.