Tips for Optimizing Content for Different Social Media Platforms

Feb 16, 2022

Let’s start with the final verdict—social media does wonder! You can use it to promote products and services, launch campaigns, engage with customers, increase brand awareness. And ultimately, boost your sales and improve your business.

Sounds great right? Well, that’s if you can do it correctly. Social media is more than just posting interesting content, it is about posting the “right” content to feed the appetite of a specific group of users. There is no one-size-fits-all content!

In this article, we will be focusing mainly on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter—the three most commonly used platforms by businesses worldwide.

TOPICS TO COVER

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Engagement is key

Conclusion

FACEBOOK

With over 2.91 billion monthly active users by 2021 third quarter, Facebook is by far still the most popular and versatile platform for social media marketing. Your Facebook posts aren’t limited to a specific preferred medium. Whether it is text-based, image-based, video-focused posts, they will all work well when promoting on Facebook.

Let’s start with the most obvious tip—every Facebook post needs visuals. It doesn’t matter if it’s a photo, a graphic illustration, or a short clip, engagement rates of posts with images are generally 2.3 times higher than those without.

Facebook posts can go as short as a single word post to long-form content with up to 63,206 characters. Compared to other platforms, the “ideal length of a Facebook post” is probably quite debatable since it depends on the context and the combination of visual content.

For instance, if you are attaching a 1-minute video, you can probably lessen the text as compared to just a photo. Still, according to BuzzSumo, shorter posts with roughly around 50 characters or less generally tend to perform better than longer ones.

BuzzSumo suggests that shorter posts with roughly around 50 characters or less generally tend to perform better than longer ones

That said if you have a reason to put in details to your post, feel free to go beyond the 50-character suggestion. You will need to figure out a way to capture your readers’ interest so they will expand and read your full post.

TWITTER

It’s speed and the latest trends when it comes to Twitter. With, on average, 6000 tweets being sent every second, this is a platform with enormous potential you could use to your advantage.

Unlike Facebook with a 63,206-character limit, Twitter’s limit is 280 characters. Although it’s already a huge jump from the original 140 back in the old days, tweets are still very brief and short as compared to others. (Click here if you want to know how Twitter counts different characters)

Twitter can only cater up to 280 characters per tweet

Like I’ve just mentioned, Twitter is a platform to know about the latest trends, latest news, latest talk of the town. Basically anything and everything “latest” going on. And hashtags will play a big role in this.

You as business owners will get to know what people are thinking about a certain topic or product type (basically, getting consumer insights). At the same time, if you add a specific hashtag to your tweet, your tweet will appear on the timeline of hashtag followers, even if the user didn’t follow your account.

Use relevant hashtags, and limit the number of hashtags you use each tweet

Just remember to not overuse your hashtags. After all, you only have 280 characters! (And it’s hard to read)

Another feature you should use, which would require you to spend a bit, is Twitter ads. It has enormous potential in increasing your reach and engagement on the platform. There are several types of Twitter ads, and you will be choosing the “right one” depending on what you want to achieve.

Promoted Tweets—these will appear like regular tweets on users’ timelines, search results, user profiles, etc. The only difference—a “Promoted” tag at the bottom left of the promoted tweet.

Promoted Accounts—other than promoting a specific tweet, you can also promote the entire account. This is beneficial as you might be able to target users who might be interested in your brand, or brands similar to yours, but not necessarily following you. This type of ad will appear in the “Who to follow” section.

Promoted Trends—particularly useful if you are launching a new campaign or a product. Twitter trends are essentially popular “topics” that are currently popular among users, generated by an algorithm that recognizes and identifies topics that are being mentioned more than others. These are driven by hashtags, keywords, and phrases users include in their tweets.

By opting for this method, Promoted Trends will appear at the very top of Twitter’s “Trends” section. These promoted hashtags/topics will be the very first thing users will notice when looking at this section.

Source: Twitter Blog

INSTAGRAM

Instagram pretty much does what Facebook and Twitter do, but is a lot more visual compared to the two. It is extremely important to make sure you are posting professional, nicely edited, and fine-tuned photos or graphics. Spend some time thinking and planning your Instagram content, consistency is the key here. You want to create a cohesive Instagram feed (the grid).

Hashtags might be a bit complicated and confusing with Instagram. In September 2021, Instagram started suggesting users use only 3-5 hashtags (it used to be 30, then to 15), and that has caused a lot of confusion among creators and users.

While I’m not here to tell you how many hashtags you should use, everyone has different opinions on this matter (and it hasn’t been long since Instagram changed its advice). But one thing that will never change, is that hashtags will increase your Instagram post’s reach. And the more relevant your hashtags are, the higher chance you will get noticed by your intended target audiences.

While Instagram suggest to only use 3-5 hashtags, it is still fine to use more. As long as it's relevant to your content

There are hashtags for literally everything. Even down to both singular and plural forms of specific words. It probably wouldn’t be much of a help to include both #camera and #camera hashtags. Take a look at the follower counts of specific hashtags, the one with more followers is probably the one you should opt for if you aim to get a wider reach.

Even with the tiniest detail (E.g. Camera vs Cameras), check which one is more commonly used for bigger reach

Instagram stores can be great additions to your overall Instagram strategy. These can be anything—video reel, static graphic, behind-the-scenes footage, marketing campaign, etc., and they will disappear in 24-hours or save them as “highlights”. You will not be spamming your followers with tons of content, and won’t change or mess up the design of your profile feed.

Engagement is vital!

Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, it doesn’t matter which platform you are on, you need to engage with users. This is how you can build your brand image, brand reputation, get noticed, attract visitors, turn them into potential customers, and expand your business.

Interact with users, interact with other brands, interact with influencers, engage with users’ content and let them feel “special”. Your goal is to get your business as visible as possible.

Social edia is all about engaging with your audiences. You can reply user's comments

Engage with users by replying to their comments (E.g. Yes Theory Facebook post)

Another way to engage with users is by using user-generate content

Another way is to make use of user generated content

Example of how big companies are interacting on Twitter with McDonald's tweet

Look at how these big brands are interacting with McDonald’s french fries tweet

CONCLUSION

While it will be good if you have multiple social media presence. I will still suggest that you do that gradually, don’t start hopping onto all platforms without making sure you have the resources to handle them. (Plus you don’t necessarily need to be on every single one! It depends on your product/service and target audience)

Social media is much more than just posting and sharing things. You need to create the content, edit the content, publish them, monitor user reactions, monitor the latest trends, and interact with others. Managing a social media platform alone is already an actual job!

Do you have enough manpower? Who are your target audiences? Are you that heavy on video content to the point where you need to open a YouTube account? Rather than being on every single social media platform, why not focus and excel on just a few?

Looking to also build a website and promote your business online alongside your social media strategies? Thanks to all the available tools, is it much easier to build a professional-looking website.

If you have no knowledge of website building and don’t know anything about coding, I will strongly suggest you use website builders like Website.com. These are all-in-one website building solutions developed by professional web developers. Most of them come with an in-house customer support team that knows the product inside-out.

However, if you are looking to have full control over your website and have flexibility in customizing it exactly the way you want. You will need to choose content management systems( CMS) like WordPress instead. These are full-blown platforms with numerous third-party plugins, you will definitely find someone that allows you to achieve whatever you want to achieve.

The downside, it has a much steeper learning curve for beginners. It is also an open-source platform, meaning you are pretty much on your own, searching for answers from a community of developers and WordPress users if you come across any technical issues.