7 Ways To Improve Your Social Media Posts

Publishing to social media is something a lot of us don't put much thought to. After all, we've been publishing to platforms like Facebook and Twitter for over 10 years so it's easy to fall into some traps when trying to publish great posts for your business. Ultimately, as a business, your goal is to drive up engagement, connect with existing customers, meet new customers, and display your know-how in your industry. Fortunately, we've been doing it a while and have learned from mistakes (including some of our own!) and have found some keys to getting a social media post right.

1. Include some form of media

Attaching an image, video, or gif in your post should at least double the engagement, and with modern smartphones capable of taking super high resolution photographs, there's no reason to never include at least a picture with a post. 

2. Ask for engagement

One of the easiest ways to drive up engagement on a post is to... ask for engagement! People love answering questions if it's something that interests them and is fun. For example, using a fill-in-the-blank post has proven to be a great way to not only drive up engagement but it also helps you learn a lot about your customers. Some other methods that are also popular are:

3. Don't be vague, be direct.

When you're selling a product or service, you want to make sure that you're always making it relevant for your follower. Replace words like "He" and "She" with "You". This makes your post more personable, memorable, and most importantly pushes your client to think of using your product.

4. Develop a brand personality

People love engaging with other people.

People do not like engaging with corporations. 

So make sure you don't sound like a corporation. Many successful companies develop a social media style guide which explains what type of personality they would like to display online. A social media style guide can include what kind of tone you want to have (funny, professional, helpful), how you plan to talk about your brand, and what your ultimate goal for social media is. You can even have a different social media style guide for each social network you are a part of.

One of our favorite social media accounts is the official Twitter account for our hometown Atlanta Hawks. They do an amazing job marketing the franchise while having a fantastic sense of humor. Their Twitter account is nationally regarded as one of the best in the business.

❤️ Happy Valentine's Day to everyone except the @DetroitPistons. ❤️

?: 7:00 ET
?: @HawksOnFSSE
?: @929TheGame
?: #FOXSportsGO
?: https://t.co/2l7tOTuDbh
?: https://t.co/uziBwzeO6k pic.twitter.com/veSJSNWwVQ

— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) February 14, 2018

5. Keep up with the trends

Social media is the first spots people go to when they want to talk about some current trends. You can take advantage of this by publishing content relating to trending topics and having hundreds of thousands of people see your content. Not only does this make you look like you keep up with what's hot, it's also a very easy way to have a post go viral. So keep up with the trending hashtags and news topics!

6. Keep it short

When publishing to Twitter, you have the benefit of being limited to 280 characters. Other platforms which give you the freedom to publish longer posts allow you to fall into a trap of trying to write too much. This is a common occurence on Facebook posts. We've found that Facebook posts under 100 characters can receive over 60% more engagements than posts that are longer than 100 characters. Peoples attention spans aren't very long, so try to keep your post brief.

7. Stay consistent

Unfortunately, this is where many brands fall down. Even if you follow all the above pieces of advice, you end up losing all of your luster if you don't follow through on a consistent basis. Consistency is key on social media, and making sure you're putting yourself in front of your followers at least once a day on every platform is the bare minimum to make sure you're maintain a good social media presence.