When you start using social media to promote your products, services, and content, it’s important to understand that social media platforms are simply a tool for you to use to get your message out about your brand. These different social media post types help you to do that. But because it’s just a tool, you don’t want to place too much emphasis on one platform, but you do want to use at least the top three that your audience uses. You also don’t “own” your slice of the pie on social media so you can build something there but always be drawing people to your email list and website to make sure you can connect with them in the future.
Social media is a way to connect with your audience outside of your website and to let them learn to know, like, and trust you. People buy from brands they know, like and trust so building that connection will go a long way but will take some time to get right.
When we are going through the types of posts to create, the word relevant is used a lot. To know what is relevant, you should know your customer avatar. This helps you understand what they find humorous, what their interests are, and what type of things make them click to like or share. If you sell dog treats, relevant posts would be pet-related – maybe you are sharing about the local pet shelter events or you are posting dog-related memes or questions. These are things that your customer is interested in and matches with your brand.
Here are the 12 different social media post types to focus on with your branding and marketing efforts.
- High-Quality Relevant Graphical Posts – When you create a social media post, always seek to make it graphic and beautiful. You want it to be something that looks good enough to share. When your customers share your posts, it means that they really felt connected to the message and it also gives you more reach on that platform.
- Use Original Images and Designs – While stock photos are useful and you can use them if you choose high-quality shots, you should consider making your own original images and designs instead. By doing this, you’ll avoid using the images that everyone else is using and it will look like your own branding. You don’t have to use highly stylized pictures for these social media post types.
- Share Relevant Screen Shots – One really good way to get your information out there is to show them screenshots that help them understand your words better. For example, if you can show step by step how to do something with screenshots, it’s going to be more informative to your audience. You can use these on many social media platforms in a story type post to show a process and get lots of engagement.
- Create Data-Centric Infographics – If you have ever written or purchased a blog post or article that includes a lot of stats and data, a great way to repurpose that is to create an infographic. You can hire someone on Fiverr.com to help you, or use software like Canva.com to do it yourself. An infographic is a quick way to display fun facts about your product in an interesting and easy to digest format. These can be shared a lot on social media.
- Get Personal with Your Update – Your audience will appreciate some information about your life too. Don’t go nuts, but you can relate the things you do in your life to your work. For example, if you like to go running every day, a picture of the road you’re running on and a quote will go far to engage your audience and elicit trust from them if it’s relevant. If it’s “bring your furry friend to work day”, then show them off and let people know a little more about your company culture.
- Show Your Audience a Little Something Behind the Scenes – Just like giving them a personal update about your run, you can also give them a sneak peek behind the scenes about the work you’re doing. For example, you could have a screenshot of your laptop with the first chapter of your new book included, or a live video while you’re hosting open office hours. Letting them know what’s coming or even to give feedback on an idea is a great way to engage your audience with this social media post type.
- Make Graphics from Important Quotes or Excerpts – When you want to highlight information within the content you’re linking to, make a graphic that displays the quote or excerpt in an attractive way. Make sure you acknowledge the author, too! But this is where knowing your audience shines as quotes are shared on social media frequently.
- Encourage User-Generated Content – Client testimonials, comments, feedback, and other user-generated content is always important to include on social media. You can create a graphic from a compliment or even a question to use in your social media updates. This shows your audience that you are paying attention to their feedback and can help sell more stuff in a “non-salesy” way.
- Add Webinars, Video, and Audio – Most humans like getting their information in different formats. Include a variety of formats, including text, images, webinars, video, and audio, about the information you’re sharing. Realize that right now, live video is a huge draw and people love being part of it, but it also has a high amount of replay views, making it a great use of time to get more engagement.
- Do Planned and Random Live Streams – You can keep your audience on their feet if you randomly include some planned and last moment live streams on your social media accounts. Planned live streams give your audience a chance to tune in and connect directly, but random live streams can be a great way to showcase the behind the scenes content that you might be able to do more “spur of the moment”.
- Consider Using New Types of Content – There are numerous types of content that come into vogue over time. Right now, virtual reality, interactive content like a quiz, and so forth are very popular and effective in encouraging more engagement. But depending on your audience, they may not care for the “latest” thing. If your audience is older, they may find Tik-Tok frustrating, but if you have younger audience, they may only see you if you are on that platform.
- Downloadable Content – eBooks and guides can also be shared on social media, just like other types of content. Allowing your audience to download content directly from their social accounts will be appreciated. This can also help you to build an email list – because you need to do this! But helpful information that is going to encourage them to use your products correctly and more often is always a great item to put on social for them to use.
Marketing using these social media post types is very effective and is an important component to include in your overall marketing strategy. In fact, you should find a way to use social media to promote every single piece of content you publish, including every product or service you sell. Use various types of posts to get the job done and to keep your audience interested. Over time, you will see which posts work the best and what hours your audience is most active and you can adjust your posts. But getting started is the first step and setting up these posts will help you connect and engage your audience.