What Type of Social Media Content to Create for Businesses?

Social media marketing uses social platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Companies with online presence can easily reach their potential audience with social media content on suitable platforms. This modern-day phenomenon can help them engage with their customers by posting relevant content on their company’s page, which will keep them coming back again and again!

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Before we can think of what social media content to create, we should be familiar with the different types of social media.

Social Networking Sites

Social networking is one of the oldest forms of social media. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, WeChat, Weibo and LinkedIn which allow user accounts to interact with each other in many different ways are called “networking” platforms because they bring people together through their online experience.

Photo Sharing Platforms

Photo sharing platforms allow people to share their life with friends and family in a visual way. The two most popular platforms are Instagram and Pinterest. Instagram allows you to post photos of anything from food travels or outdoor adventures, while Pinterest specialises more on visual content like cute animal videos shared by people all around the world who found inspiration through other users’ pins! These sites also feature feeds where one can view posts similar as they browse through different categories such as food, fashion, nature or architecture tours.

Video Sharing Platforms

The advancement of video cameras in mobile devices has made video sharing more popular than ever. Video sharing platforms like YouTube, Vimeo and Tik Tok allow people to share short-form and long-form videos featuring a wide range of topics from reviews, how-to videos, vlogging and random funny videos.

Social New Sites

Discussion forums allow people to post topics and comment on them. People often post links to external sites to discuss news, current events, niche topics and anything under the sun. Reddit is an excellent example of this type of platform as it allows users to post content like text posts and images organised into separate subreddits called “subreddits”. Other popular discussion forums include Quora and Digg.

Blogging Networks

Blogging networks are a way to publish your thoughts on the job, current events and more. You can enjoy many benefits of having your own blog without hosting it yourself such as attracting new readers from around the world who visit these sites looking for interesting content you have written about! Popular blogging networks include BlogSpot, WordPress and even Facebook and LinkedIn that allow long-form articles to be posted onto their platform.

THE NEED FOR GOOD SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

To be successful on social media, you must create engaging and interesting posts to elicit reactions and build a following. Creating content that viewers can easily get hooked onto your social media channel or account is no easy task.

Each type of social media platform requires its own content, and the user behaviour, expectation and user interface are very different from platform to platform. So you must learn the best formats of content for each platform and build “templates” that work for you own creative style and appeals to your target audience.

IDEAS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

Here are some ideas on the types of social media content to create.

Blogs & Articles

A blog is an excellent way to build credibility and to show the expertise and experience that your company has. The best social media platforms to share blog posts and articles include Facebook and LinkedIn. Facebook allows 1500 words in an article and LinkedIn allows unlimited text length. Putting up part of the article and posting a link to the rest of the article means you can drive traffic to your site.

However, blogging and writing articles require creativity, effort and time to write. You need to write articles that have value to your target audience and ideally, have originality. You must also have the discipline to blog regularly as it takes time to build a following.

Images

An image is one the best forms of social media marketing because it can engage an audience better than blog posts or articles as people scroll through their social media feed. Humans are attracted to visual images more so than text. Beautiful photos that are interesting and original will also attract a following. For businesses, infographics are also an excellent image to share as it can condense and summary an article in a single visual diagram.

Videos

Studies have shown that videos are the most engaging content on social media platforms. With the video capturing and editing capabilities of mobile devices, it is easy to film and edit a video for your business. Moving visuals capture a social media audience’s attention even better than images. Besides building a following, good videos can drive traffic directly towards your website for lead and sales conversions.

External Links

One of the best ways to save time is by sharing external links to useful and interesting articles. Always make sure that these sources can be trusted before including them on-site; otherwise, readers may hesitate linking back due doubt about authenticity.

The disadvantage of sharing external links is that you will be promoting other people’s content and not your own. However, when used sparingly, your followers will appreciate the shared content if it has high value and is relevant to them.

REPURPOSE SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

Most businesses will try to maintain different social media accounts but in practicality, unless you have a dedicated social media team, it is very different to have an active presence on every single platform. As such, it is best to choose the 2 or 3 platforms which are most relevant to you.

To maximise the time, effort and resources needed to create content, it is always a good idea to repurpose the same piece of content but customise it to fit different social media platforms.

eFunnely is a marketing platform and source for digital marketing information, tools and digital solution providers in Southeast Asia.