A lot of people don’t think of social media sharing as content. But it is content. You may be sharing content you wrote for your blog, or an article, or a guest post on someone else’s blog, but you still have to create content just for your social media networks to make the social media really work well for you. When creating social media content there are some specific things to consider in the process.
What Is the Purpose of the Content?
When you create content for any reason, it’s important to understand what you hope to accomplish with the content. Do you want to inspire your audience to take some action? Do you want to trigger an emotional response? Are you attempting to build relationships with your viewers? Perhaps you want to educate your viewers about something? Knowing why you created the content will help you know how to promote the content better on social media.
Have I Included an Appropriate Call to Action?
No matter how good your social media content is, if you don’t include an appropriate call to action and make it easy for your audience to engage, you have wasted your time. Can your audience make comments easily? Can they share your information easily? The easier you make it for your audience to engage, the better. Don’t put up roadblocks.
Are the Images I Have Chosen Appropriate?
When it comes to social media, images are very important. Are your images representative of the content? Are your images the right size? How do they look on the particular social media that you’re using to share? Some social media cuts images off in a funny way and the image no longer looks appropriate for sharing. Always ensure that you’ve optimized your images well enough that they look good across all social media networks when shared.
Is the Content Unique Enough?
Don’t share the exact same words and phrases in every single social media network. Even if you’re sharing the same blog post on each of your social media accounts, it’s important to do so in a unique way for each account so that you don’t look like a robot. For instance, on Facebook you will want to include an image, a short blurb, and a link to your content. But you will also want to ask a question to increase engagement.
Is the Timing Right?
Each different social media network has different times where people are more likely to look at your post. In addition, your own audience may have their own individual times when they look at various social media networks. Read the stats provided by each social media account to learn when the best time is, plus test it out yourself. You don’t want to send out information at the wrong time because you’ll lower your shares and views. Time it right and you’ll maximize engagement.
The important thing is that you create some best practices surrounding creating content for social media. It’s going to be different for each network, but you’ll be glad to develop a standard so that you will be more successful with your social media content.