Key Elements of a Social Media Post for Your Business

A business in any industry is at a disadvantage if they are not using social media to help connect with their audience. Social media provides a direction connection to current customers and potential customers so that your brand can begin having a conversation with them. To attract more of your target audience to your social media accounts, here are some key elements that all of your posts should have.

Know Your Audience

Before you write a single social media post, you must determine who belongs in your target audience. This will help you understand what they are looking to interact with on any particular social media platform. Your business may already have plenty of market research on your audience so you will know what keywords, phrases and content to provide online.

Provide Useful Content

Once you have established who your audience will be, it is time to start thinking about what type of content you want to post on your social media accounts. What type of content you use will be determined by the platform. For places like Twitter where messages need to be short, having photos and videos with a link to more information are important. Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms that provide the option for longer messages can give you an opportunity to write longer messages with or without a specific type of media attached.

With everything you post, you want it to have the potential to be liked, shared and get a conversation started.

Start a Conversation

Most businesses without a strong social media marketing plan will have messages that lack any sort of enthusiasm from fans and followers. Often these messages are straightforward advertisements for products, services and sales. Not only will these posts be ignored by followers, they can also get lost in the shuffle of algorithms that determine what your followers see in their news feeds. A company’s social media presence should provide much more to the consumer.

Your brand’s social media posts should start a conversation. Discuss engaging topics such as industry news, previews of new products and services or posts with a purpose to promote the charities and social responsibility topics the company believes in.

Place a Call to Action

Every message your brand posts should have a specific call to action. This doesn’t always have to be clicking a link to buy a product. A call to action on social media can also include asking followers to engage in conversation on the post’s topic, share the post with others or provide feedback on a specific product or service that your company offers. The choice in what call to action you want followers to do will depend on the social media platform you use. Long conversations and feedback are great for Facebook, while calls to action for making purchases work better on shorter message platforms like Twitter.

Make it Searchable

Hashtags work on almost every social media platform today, and they can be an important tool for reaching your target audience. Like keywords placed within the content of your brand’s website, hashtags will let social media users search for that keyword or phrase to find more information. Utilizing hashtags with your posts can open you up to a wider audience, but hashtags should be used without overwhelming the message or going off topic with a tag that isn’t pertinent.

Including these elements in all of your social media posts will help you build an audience that wants to hear your message and learn more about your brand. If you need help in planning your social media strategy and crafting your posts across multiple platforms, please contact us for more information on our social media services.