The quality of the content you post on social media determines your success. When it comes to developing effective, high-performing content, small businesses, on the other hand, confront numerous challenges. It's competitive, time-consuming, and should, at a minimum, add value to your customer's experience. Creating content for social media normally involves a diverse mix of content kinds to help overcome these obstacles. You may provide your audience with a more engaging experience if you use a variety of these different styles in your marketing approach.
Types of Social Media content.
Here are the 10 different types of social media content, their benefits and drawbacks, content marketing style, how to create them, and the ideal platforms for each:
1. Articles, Blogs, Articles, Instructions, and Other Written Content
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Advantages: These articles demonstrate your company's skill and understanding, which can help you gain credibility and improve your reputation.
Disadvantages: There is a lot of blog content, so competition is fierce and coming up with new topic ideas requires a lot of imagination. Generating different types of social media content takes a long time, especially if you're expressing hard concepts.
How to make it: Trending searches might help you develop appealing content ideas. This can provide insight into the types of queries people are looking for answers to, which can help you produce topics to write about.
Platforms to use: The best channels for this type of material are LinkedIn and Facebook, especially for articles that are 1,500 words or greater. You can publish the complete article, a small excerpt, or a link to the article. Twitter is also a good option. However, due to the character limit, you can only provide a link and a short quote, which can still bring traffic to your website.
Pro Tip: Make use of the content calendar. Your content calendar serves as a roadmap for the story you want to tell about your company and the content you want to offer. You can turn concepts and broad strategies into an effective plan that can be changed as you learn more about what works best when you take a holistic perspective of your social media or email marketing output. Use the content marketing editorial calendar to see when and how you communicate with your audience. The calendar shows all marketing emails, social posts, mailers, and digital advertising that have been scheduled and completed. You can display your types of social media content for a particular audience or all audiences by filtering your calendar.
2. Electronic Books (eBooks)
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Advantages: An eBook is lengthier and more extensive than a blog article, allowing you to demonstrate your industry knowledge. Many fewer firms generate eBooks than blogs, so you won't have as much competition.
Disadvantages: Not everyone wants to read an entire eBook, and creating and finding information that will appeal to your target audience takes time. Creating different types of social media content can help generate leads, but they are not always read.
How to make it: An eBook is just a collection of blog posts organized into chapters by topic. You should select your best content or employ a professional writer who has experience producing eBooks.
Platforms to use: LinkedIn users come to interact with colleagues and learn about their jobs or other interests, making it an excellent platform for sharing an eBook. Secondary alternatives include Facebook and Twitter.
3. External Content Links
Advantages: If you don't have time to publish a blog post or your writer is on vacation, you may always link to relevant articles, resources, and websites from reliable sources. Industry leaders are also excellent content creators.
Disadvantages: You're effectively opening the door to another business's social media experience when you connect to content that you haven't developed. Readers might even find the other source more valuable than your page. Content curation is an effective digital marketing technique on social media, but it may be time-consuming. It's crucial to keep an eye on your social analytics to ensure that curated material is engaging and compelling, rather than abandoning your own content generation.
How to make it: Examine various blogs for keywords related to those on your website. (Keywords are words or phrases often searched on the internet.) Check out the website and read all types of social media content. This will prevent you from sharing an article from a site that may not accurately reflect your brand's ideas on social media.
Platforms to use: The best sites are LinkedIn and Facebook, which are excellent marketing tools for any type of written content, even if it's just linked to it. A secondary option is Twitter.
4. Photographs
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Good graphics or videos improve interaction and make your brand more appealing to buyers. If you employ them, customers are less likely to swipe past your post and miss your message.
Advantages: Long-form blogs and essays are far less digestible and compelling than visual types of social media content. Smartphone cameras can produce breathtaking images, and applications make it easy to edit them, apply filters, and more.
Disadvantages: Platforms that emphasize images, such as Instagram, face competition. A professional camera and editing software can be expensive and time-consuming if you want quality beyond what a smartphone can provide.
How to make it: Images and pictures are among the simplest types of content to make. It's as simple as taking a picture using your smartphone or camera.
Platforms to use: Images look great on all platforms, but Instagram and Pinterest are the most photo-friendly. Alternatives include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. Incorporating an image into a blog article can also boost engagement and clicks.
5. Films
It's never been easier to record with the introduction of smartphone cameras. These types of social media content are a fun way to show off your stuff, and Facebook's algorithm favors it. Furthermore, with the mainstreaming of live streaming, consumer expectations for social video have evolved. Videos with a harsher edge often feel more at home on social media platforms. Give it a try and include them in your content marketing efforts!
Advantages: It's simple and convenient to record videos, and they're more entertaining than photos. How-to tutorials, video tours, and product updates and demos are all examples of fantastic video content that can increase website traffic and revenue.
Disadvantages: Making short videos is inexpensive, but expenditures will rise if you desire a high-production quality. Video production, like image production, has a range of difficulties. Depending on where you fall on the spectrum, you'll require particular skills and equipment.
Platforms to use: Although YouTube is the king of video content, Facebook videos also perform well. Instagram is the best alternative for shorter videos, much better than YouTube.
6. Video Stories
Advantages: Stories are photographs and short videos that endure for 24 hours before fading. Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat all have them. Keep consumers informed about upcoming events, special discounts, and other announcements—or give them a behind-the-scenes look at your company. The options are literally limitless!
Disadvantages: The fear of losing out can be a powerful incentive, yet some users may choose not to engage with them because of their brief lifespan.
How to make it: Each social media network's app has the opportunity to create an image or video tale. Because high-quality production isn't required, they're simple to make for any company.
Platforms to use: Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have popularized these types of social media content and continue to be the most extraordinary possibilities.
7. Live Videos
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Advantages: Live videos are excellent types of social media content to offer events to people who cannot attend in person. Unlike stories, which are deleted after 24 hours, live streams can be seen at any time.
Disadvantages: You'll need something to stream first, like an event. Then you'll need someone to talk to while operating the smartphone or other device. It's also crucial to have a good WIFI connection. If your internet connection is inadequate, the video may need to stop and frequently buffer, resulting in poor quality.
How to produce: Like tales, social media sites that offer live content make it easy for consumers to participate. They'll provide you with a preview of what your audience will see, giving you the chance to double-check everything before going live.
Platforms to use: The most popular live-streaming social media network is Facebook Live. Smaller platforms like Periscope are also viable, although attracting a large audience may be more difficult.
Pro advice: Make sure your social media post look nice on mobile devices if you've worked hard to develop great photographs or videos. A mobile phone is used by approximately 3/4 of the world's population, and about 80% of time spent on social media is spent on a mobile phone.
Continue to be inspired. Keep a list of corporations or organizations whose social media imagery you admire, and contact them for new content ideas from time to time.
8. Infographics
Advantages: Visuals accompany explanations, data, and other written concepts in infographics. They're very effective at communicating complex ideas.
Disadvantages: Creating infographics necessitates both copy and graphics, which may necessitate the collaboration of numerous persons. They also necessitate some imagination and investigation.
How to make it: First, make an outline for your infographic. Your writer and graphic designer can then start crafting the separate components and stitching them together once the outline is complete.
Best platforms: For infographics, Facebook and LinkedIn are also fantastic possibilities. Twitter is a different option.
9. Customer Feedback and Testimonials
Advantages: People believe other people's ideas and experiences more than what a company claims, so testimonials and evaluations are important types of social media content.
Disadvantages: It's not always easy to persuade clients to leave testimonials. This is also the only form of content you don't have complete control over. There is no assurance that reviews will be positive.
How to make it: Reach out to previous customers and ask if they'd be willing to provide a testimonial. Incentivizing customers to write reviews for your business is a terrible practice, as it might appear dishonest, and review services like Yelp may penalize you for it.
Platforms to use: On Facebook and LinkedIn, testimonials and reviews perform effectively. On company pages, Facebook includes built-in star ratings.
10. Contests
Advantages: Social media contests are exciting and entertaining types of social media content to host because people enjoy winning.
Disadvantages: You'll need a prize, which will cost money. Also, if the contest entry process is arduous, participation may be poor.
How to make it: Consider a gift that your audience would be excited to win. This should ideally be relevant to your business, although not required. Then make a timetable for how long the contest will last and entry rules.
Platforms to use: Contests can be hosted on any social media platform, but don't go overboard on more professional platforms like LinkedIn.
Conclusion
These were the various types of social media content that were effective. All of these are also the most effective sorts of content for social media you can utilize on your brand website, as you may have noticed. If you want to build a website to sell your products and services but don't want to deal with the hassles and costs of hiring a full-time developer, sign up for a free account on Strikingly, and we'll walk you through the process. Many of our users are operating simple websites that they developed for free on Strikingly and have combined them with their social media profiles to offer their marketing initiatives a more comprehensive effect. With our Free Plan, you can do the same by trying out our easy tools and features for as long as you want.
A Strikingly website may integrate almost any form of social networking content. You can include social networking icons in your site's footer, which will take users to your social media pages when clicked. You may also include social media handles at the end of each blog post. This allows readers to easily share your posts on social media. When users click on any social media handles, the appropriate social media network opens on their device, with their account logged in and the post ready to share. You can use our social feed area to embed a portion of your Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter feed on your website. These features in Strikingly were built with the importance of social media in mind. However, having a website is the first step, linking it to your types of social media content. As a result, if you require any assistance in establishing or maintaining your Strikingly website, you can reach out to us at any time via our live chat support system, which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
