- When it comes to social, don’t set it and forget it. Freshening up your feed is a natural part of digital marketing.
- Followers crave a balance of consistency and variety. Strive to maintain a consistent brand presence while still surprising your audience with fresh, informative, entertaining content.
- Owned content (graphics, images, and research) is always better, but you can get creative with stock imagery and third-party content if you have to.
- Staying fresh on social media is hard work, but social tools make it easier.
When it comes to digital marketing, it’s easy to get comfortable. You settle into a routine, regularly publishing quality blogs and bumping them through social media. You get some likes, maybe a comment or two – but you start to wonder if there’s more you could be doing to connect with your audience. More often than not, the answer is yes.
Don’t worry – that moment when you know you need to shake up your content routine is just a natural part of digital marketing. Tastes change, platforms come and go, and brands constantly have to adapt and find new ways to stand out.
If you need a little direction when it comes to figuring out exactly how to revitalize your online presence, we’ve got you. Below, we’ll share a few types of social media posts we’ve been swearing by lately.
Six Types of Social Posts to Revitalize Your Online Presence
1. Custom Graphics
Social media has a reputation for being a godsend for marketers because it’s technically free and thus accessible to brands of all shapes, sizes, and budgets.
But this reputation can be misleading. While there is basically no barrier to entry for setting up an account and creating posts, developing a strong brand presence can actually require quite an investment of time and money. Anyone can post a Harvard Business Review article they find interesting, but it takes real thought and creativity to craft social posts that both demonstrate your unique brand’s voice and make people want to click and engage.
One way to do this is through custom graphics. Developing a visual style unique to your brand helps you strike the balance between consistency and variety your followers crave. This is a go-to strategy for RMG when we want to publish a piece of content we think will really resonate with our audience.
When we posted our special Valentine’s Day blog, we made sure to include a graphic that showcased our playful attitude alongside our expertise – and, of course, our logo!
Creating custom graphics does take work, but it’s well worth the effort to carve out a unique and authoritative presence on your followers’ feeds.
2. Information
Social media platforms are valuable spaces to showcase your authority and credibility. One way to do that is through informative content that helps your followers learn something valuable through your unique brand lens.
This is an especially good opportunity for brands in industries whose customers need lots of technical information before making purchasing decisions. This includes YMYL companies – think legal, financial, or medical services – but can very well include companies outside of that space. For example, when it was clear that companies across industries were moving to virtual workspaces amidst COVID-19, we shared the following work-from-home tips based on our own experience:
While you’re creating those custom graphics mentioned above, think about creating specific templates geared toward statistics, facts, tips, or quotes from recent studies. Even better if these factoids come from your own research, but it’s fine to aggregate third-party research too – as long as you give credit.
3. Inspirational Quotes
Who doesn’t love a good inspirational quote? Again, embrace your industry here and really think about what kinds of quotes would move your audience. For example, a brand in, say, the wellness industry might find success with quotes from spiritual figures or popular wisdom traditions.
Again, it’s best if you can work these into branded graphics. But if you don’t have the resources for that, you can also share quotes in social captions alongside attractive images.
4. Testimonials
Have lots of happy customers who are willing to share their experiences? Social media is the perfect place to broadcast this type of content.
You have a couple of options for sharing customer testimonials. One is to create specific graphic templates for this type of content, perhaps including a quote from the customer alongside a photo. Another option is user-generated content, or UGC. You might ask customers to post their own photos and stories and then tag your brand. Read more about the pros and cons of this approach in our blog on UGC.
5. Call-and-Response Content
Call it what you want – we’re just talking any type of content that calls on your audience to engage directly. This can include contests, polls, or just open-ended questions that followers can respond to in the comments.
One caveat here: Any time you’re engaging directly with followers, you run the risk of getting trolled. When you create this type of content, make sure you have the bandwidth to monitor responses very carefully. Otherwise this kind of stunt can quickly sour your brand presence.
6. Personal Posts
At the end of the day, social media is about connection. That’s truer than ever amid the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Often, it helps to take down the “brand” mask and show your followers who’s behind all those posts.
Some of our favorite posts to create at RMG are those that show our team hanging out or having fun. Get real with your followers by showing them how you get real with each other, whatever that means for your brand or industry.
Final Thoughts
While innovation is a key part of a balanced social media diet, don’t forget the bread and butter. For many brands, that means sharing their own blog or video content alongside well-curated third-party content – i.e., articles from thought leaders or industry partners that customers and followers might find valuable. At the end of the day, you want to be sharing things that will enrich your followers’ online experience by informing and entertaining them.
With that goal in mind, remember the following tips:
- Hashtags are your friends. Hashtags are a fundamental part of any social post because they get your post in front of people who aren’t already following you. Include a mix of general and brand-specific hashtags, with emphasis on the former.
- Use scheduling wisely. Scheduling social posts ahead of time goes a long way in making your workflow more efficient. At the same time, an important part of a good social media presence is appearing fresh and relevant. It’s a good idea to schedule some posts but also plan time throughout the week to create posts on the fly, in order to stay up-to-date with current events or changes in your industry space.
- Use social media tools. We don’t just mean calendar and scheduling tools, though those are important. Running a social media campaign also requires design, hashtag research, and more. Some social tools are marketed as all-in-one, but plenty of brands – including RMG – work with a custom suite of mixed-and-matched tools that fit our particular needs. Learn more about how you can use social tools (plus our favorites) in our blog on the subject.
Social media can be more work than it seems like, but it’s well worth the effort. If you need guidance from the experts, we’re happy to help. Get in touch with the RMG team today!
