Creating Engaging Content for Social Media: Tips and Best Practices

Creating Engaging Content for Social Media: Tips and Best Practices

Although it may seem simple to create content, it can be challenging to consistently produce new posts. Keep these suggestions in mind when writing engaging social media content.

The majority of people's daily routines now include a significant amount of social media use.

Nearly 50% of Americans use Facebook daily, and 70% log on at least once, according to a recent Pew Research Centre study.

We have many options for interacting with one another, sharing information, and connecting with brands thanks to social media platforms. And as a result, it has become crucial for businesses to give their social media strategy top priority.

However, it is simpler said than done.

As most social media marketers and business owners are aware, it can be challenging to consistently produce interesting content, particularly if you need to post frequently in order to stay relevant and connect with your target audience.

There are also more than 3.8 billion users on various social networks. And the number of people who own mobile devices keeps rising quickly.

With the right approach, businesses can reach millions of potential customers who are actively using these websites.

So, the following advice will help you produce interesting content that will appeal to your intended audience:

1. Fewer words, more video

Have you ever paused your social media scrolling to read a long wall of text? Probably not, even if you enjoy the source account.

However, if you do, I'm sure you usually get bored and keep scrolling. Or perhaps you're saying to yourself, "Get to the point already."

The moral of this tale must be unambiguous and straightforward. Make it a policy to always include an image or a video when posting on social media if you're marketing your company there.

For your brand, be imaginative. You can make a post trend this way by hitting the key points. Watch the number of likes and comments increase as you post images or videos that speak to your audience.

2. Take your own pictures

Stop using stock images in your social media posts immediately. Yet why? They look great and are incredibly simple to find, right?

Stock photos don't work as well as real photos, I guess. They are therefore detrimental to SEO.

Marketing Experiments tested a real photo of one of their clients against their best-performing stock photo to demonstrate this.

The outcome? Visitors were 35% more likely to sign up when they could see the actual photo. Furthermore, a recent study found that 62% of consumers said that high-quality product images were important in influencing their choice to buy.

Here are three suggestions for original social media pictures:

Engage a nearby photographer to take pictures that complement your editorial schedule.

When you first start out, you can use a high-end smartphone and some basic props to take your photos.

Make sure the text surrounding your images corresponds to it. Images shouldn't just serve as text breaks; they should also serve to illustrate ideas.

3. Reuse your timeless content

You may be surprised to learn that people retain visual information 65% longer than text.

Repurpose your best evergreen content into infographics, charts, graphs, and social media images to benefit from this.

Keep these suggestions in mind when creating graphics:

Showcase the key points of your article.

To make your content more shareable, use quotes from it or rephrase your main points.

To create high-quality graphics, use the tools and templates offered by websites like Canva and Piktochart.

4. Share Customer Testimonials & Reviews

Consider this: You're planning to purchase a new product, but you want to do some research first.

Who do you believe to be reliable when doing research? A product salesperson or a client providing a sincere review?

Sincere and detailed reviews are important to businesses because 78% of consumers say they trust online reviews and 67.7% say it influences their purchasing decisions.

In actuality, 72% of customers will wait to buy a product until they have read a review of it.

If this tells you anything as a marketer, it's that positive customer testimonials are strong magnets at your disposal.

A fantastic way to demonstrate how much people adore and trust your brand is by showcasing positive customer testimonials about your goods, services, or customer support.

Be sure to share them on social media even though you've likely already done so on your website and blog.

Choose your best endorsements and reviews, format them into digestible chunks, and create engaging captions to go with them.

5. Search For The Latest Visual Trends

You want to upload numerous images to social media. But first, you must be aware of which visuals are effective and which are not.

Look up visual trends on social media websites and Google to learn more.

Additionally, you can check your social media analytics and insights to see what has been successful over the past few months.

Here?s how:

Visit the Most Repinned Page on Pinterest. You can view the popular pins on this page.

Utilise Instagram's most widely used hashtags when searching. For instance, #love has over 2 billion posts and is one of the most used hashtags on Instagram. Examine the posts that include this hashtag and note the ones that have a lot of engagement.

To find out which hashtags perform best, look at your competitors' hashtags and conduct an online search for your industry.

Look up popular image trends on Google. To find out more about image trends, such as those in this Canva guide, browse highly regarded websites.

To help you modify your upcoming social media strategy, check your insights on Facebook and Instagram to see how your most recent posts performed.

6. Host Competitions

Running social media contests is a surefire and quick way to expand your audience and get tonnes of engagement.

These three examples all work:

To participate, like, comment, and share. Users who like your post pass it along to friends in order to enter your giveaway.

Tag a pal. Your audience receives more entries the more friends they tag.

content created by users. Users create posts that fit a theme you specify and include your company by tagging it.

Never forget to abide by the guidelines established by each social media platform for contests. Before spending time creating your competition, review the rules because they vary depending on the platform.

Observe the following, among others:

Competition Guidelines on Facebook and Instagram

Your contests' legal operations, including the eligibility requirements, official rules, and rules governing prize distribution, are your responsibility.

Users shouldn't be asked to tag pictures incorrectly (for instance, don't ask users to tag pictures if they aren't in them).

It would be beneficial if you stated your contest is not sponsored by Facebook or Instagram.

For a complete list of the contest rules for Instagram, click here, and for Facebook, click here.

Twitter Competition Guidelines

Don't promote the creation of multiple accounts by users (they might do this to enter your contest more than once, for instance).

Avoid asking users to share the same tweet multiple times ("whoever retweets this post the most wins").

Avoid content that puts users' security at risk, such as that that contains violence, abuse, terrorism, hate speech, and adult content.

Don't send spam, and don't post private information about others.

For a complete list of Twitter's contest guidelines, refer to this manual.

Snapchat's rules for competition

Use not be made of Snapchat's logos and trademarks.

Don't promote improper, illicit, or spammy conduct.

Visit Snapchat's guide for more guidelines on what you should and shouldn't do in contests.

7. Tag bloggers and influencers The quote you used in your message

A great way to increase engagement on your blog is to use quotes from influential people. Don't stop there though.

Be sure to credit the influencers you cited by tagging them in posts on social media:

On social media, mention them and include a link to your content.

Make a beautiful graphic, then use a social media message to tag the influencer.

They'll undoubtedly value it! Additionally, it's a fantastic way to capture the interest of their supporters.

8. Your email newsletters should have social media buttons.

Do you think email and social media are competing as marketing channels? Reconsider your position.

Email and social media go hand in hand. A great way to use social media and email together is to include social media buttons in your email newsletters.

This works because email recipients only skim messages, and buttons stand out from the text in a pleasing, attention-grabbing way.

Add social media buttons below your email newsletters so that readers can check out what you're doing on their preferred platforms before you send them out.

9. Use Appropriate Hashtags

It can be difficult to get hashtags right. However, hashtags can expose your content to a much wider audience when used wisely by marketers.

On Instagram, for instance, hashtags cause your post to show up on the page for that hashtag. Like these posts that use the #tbt hashtag.

But keep in mind that not all social media platforms support hashtags equally. For instance, they receive a tonne of engagement on Instagram but little on Facebook.

To learn how many hashtags to use on each social media platform, refer to this guide:

Tweets one through two

one to three Facebook

Twitter: five to thirty

Google: two to five

10. By Using Stories & Reels, Get It Going

Should you spend the time creating stories or reels for Facebook and Instagram? Yes, to answer briefly.

The longer one: Compared to videos, reels offer the chance to generate 67% more engagements.

And as TikTok has grown, with over 1 billion monthly active users, more people are regularly watching these short videos.

Stories and reels can also be entertaining and motivating. Therefore, it's imperative to adopt the trends and include these interactive opportunities.

11. Add Riddles, Quizzes, and Puzzles to Engage Users

Could it be you? You're in a panic because you have 200 assignments from your nighttime college professor and 100 projects for the office.

You take a quiz to determine what kind of cheese you are instead of hammering into them right away. (Yep, that's also me. I'm joking. I don't have a hundred work projects.)

It is unavoidable that quizzes are appealing. In order to increase engagement, plan a fun, challenging, and original quiz or riddle and post it on social media.

12. Participate in Industry News

Showing your audience that you share their passions is one way to engage them. The key is to act quickly on newsworthy events that interest your audience.

Thought leadership content can also boost your brand's authority and assist with SEO.

Use it in your social media strategy whether it's business news on which you have an opinion or something you want to share that you are sure will benefit your brand.

Additionally, you can share blog posts you've written about industry news on social media, which can help drive traffic back to your website.

Conclusion

Social media marketing is a potent tool for producing results, as you can see. However, it doesn't have to be too much.

You can produce interesting content that will draw visitors to your website and raise brand awareness with a little creativity and effort.