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When it comes to content marketing on social media, one size does not fit all.
For many businesses, a platform-driven approach to content marketing means sharing the same content everywhere in slightly different packaging—maybe leading with a different stock photo or changing up a couple words in the social media copy, then calling it a day.
But each social network is different, which means that what sells on Facebook probably won’t work on LinkedIn (and vice versa). There are also unique features on each platform, practically begging for you to find ways to incorporate them into your marketing plan.
Below, learn more about the top social media outlets for your business, along with some ways you might get the most out of each one.
A decade and a half after it was launched, Facebook is still going strong, with more than 2.4 billion active users as of 2019. Whoever your ideal client is, you can be pretty sure they’re active on Facebook.
Of course, it’s a well-known fact that Facebook regularly changes its algorithms, which can make it difficult to predict which types of content will perform best. Plan to produce a variety: shorter videos, longer blog posts, and compelling images have the best chance of ending up in more people’s feeds. Plus, by offering different types of content, you’re appealing to potential clients who prefer to take in information in different ways.
Want to hit the ground running with a simple, yet effective content strategy? Video is your best bet. Facebook offers great opportunities for video marketers. If you’re a real estate agent, you might post a virtual tour of one of your listings or even host a virtual open house on Facebook Live.
There’s no denying the influence of Instagram. In 2019, the service reported more than 500 million daily active users. While the demographics of this platform have skewed younger, more and more people continue to sign up for an Instagram account each day.
Unlike other platforms on this list, Instagram is relatively ineffective for promoting blog posts and other text-based content. Despite this limitation, it’s arguably the hottest place for sharing photos and short videos—offering plenty of chances to show off new products, real estate listings, and video testimonials.
For businesses, the “Stories” feature is a great way to engage in brand storytelling, through images and videos that can be enhanced with polls, filters, and various other add-ons. This is a great way to humanize your brand and let people see the real person behind your business.
If you’re in real estate, try running a poll on your Instagram Story. This is an excellent way to get people engaged. Better still, because you can view who responded to your poll, it can also provide you with real-time information about your leads.
One of the major benefits of Twitter is the ability to capitalize on trending topics, which makes it more likely that potential customers will happen upon something you’ve posted. If you’re planning a piece of timely content—say, something that relates to a holiday, sports event, or awards show—promoting it with a hashtag will make it easily searchable, without costing you a dime.
But while it might be tempting to use a ton of hashtags to give your content that extra push, tread lightly. If what you’re posting doesn’t fit the theme, Twitter users will take notice, and they probably won’t react too kindly.
Consider creating content that fits in with recurring hashtags. For example, if you’re a financial advisor writing a blog post about how to save for retirement, you might market that under the weekly hashtag, #MondayMotivation.
If B2B marketing is your game, there’s really no better place for your content than LinkedIn. Most people who are active on LinkedIn are hungry for written or visual content that will help them grow their business. While there will be plenty of other content to compete with, consider it a challenge to show off your unique voice. On a platform traditionally driven by text, eye-popping photos and slickly produced videos can help you stand out from the herd.
LinkedIn Groups offer you the opportunity to network with other professionals, which will, in turn, open you up to plenty of useful articles, videos, and infographics. If you’re looking to curate content for your blog, this is a great resource.
YouTube
For video marketers, YouTube is still the gold standard. People flock to the site in droves, resulting in billions of video views each day. The most difficult thing about marketing on this massive platform is the sheer amount of content you’re up against. It’s tough competing with everything from sports highlights and music videos to clips of someone’s grandma rapping.
Still, there are ways to cut through the noise. As with any other platform, content that is useful, entertaining, or visually interesting will stand out amongst millions of mediocre offerings. Shorter videos also tend to outperform longer clips, so the more concise, the better.
To get more traction out of your YouTube content, you can embed clips on your blog postsor share them on other social media platforms—usually just by copying and pasting a link to the video’s URL.
With Pinterest, curation is the name of the game. It’s not so much about the original content you can create, but rather the value you can provide to visitors of your business’s page. But Pinterest isn’t just a long list of links—it’s a highly visual platform, driven by image thumbnails that compel your followers to click.
Pinterest also allows you to arrange your links (or “pins”) into different collections (called “boards”), making everything nice and easy for your clients to navigate. If you’re in real estate, you can have different boards devoted to all sorts of topics that will benefit homeowners, from home improvement tips to quick dinner recipes. Your clients will view your Pinterest page as an essential resource, which will make them more likely to remember you the next time they need an agent.
Click here for a real estate agent’s guide to becoming a Pinterest rock star.
If you’re on the American Lifestyle website, sharing recipes and articles with your followers is a snap. Just click the red Pinterest logo to the left of the post, log in (if you’re not already logged in), and follow the instructions in the pop-up box.
This might all seem like a lot of work — and it is. But, if you can manage to create content that performs well on even a few of these platforms, you’ll attract the attention of hundreds, maybe even thousands of new potential customers. That is surely worth the extra effort up front.
