How to Create Shareable Social Media Content

Have you ever opened Facebook with the intent of posting something to boost engagement on your profile, but you realized you don’t have a strategy to help you reach your goal?

You’re not alone. Writing optimized social media posts that are highly engaging isn’t as easy as it looks. Posting on social for a personal account can look a lot different than posting for a business account.

To get the most out of social media, you need a plan. A strategy. The way you write and publish your posts can impact your reach, authority, and overall success.

Conforming to best practices will help you reap significant rewards for your efforts.

Every social media platform involves a different strategy to help you reach a unique audience. Following the formulas below can help you post to each social media platform effectively while allowing space for creativity. Let’s dive in.

Quick Takeaways

• The way you write and publish your social media posts can impact your reach, online authority, and overall success.
• Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel when writing social media posts, stick to proven techniques.
• Once you’ve nailed the fundamental best practices for different social channels, you can get creative to stand out from competitors and capture your audience’s attention.
• Overall, keep your posts concise, authentic, and evergreen across all social media channels.

Writing Social Media Content that Wins Every Time

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, stick to proven techniques for writing social media posts. You should use a different structure for posting on each channel. Once you’ve nailed the fundamentals, you can add your own ideas to get creative and stand out.

Follow these best practices for writing social media posts for the big five: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram.

1. Tweeting on Twitter

While Twitter can feel tricky with its tight character limit, it offers many opportunities for businesses to speak out about relevant topics and engage in authentic conversations with followers. You may still feel the pressure to keep to the old 140-character limit, but today, you have room to use up to 280 characters for every Tweet.

Best Practices

• Try to constrain your tweets to 71 to 100 characters to grab people’s attention fast and encourage engagement. This also leaves room at the end for your Twitter handle if someone retweets your post.
• Keep hashtags short – under six characters whenever possible. Sticking to one or two highly relevant hashtags is a good benchmark to hit.
• Only address one topic at a time.
• If you have more to say than you can fit in a Tweet, you can link to a blog post or website that goes more in-depth.
• Use a tool like TinyURL to shorten lengthy website addresses.
• Add a captivating image.
• Tag people (when appropriate).

2. Posting on Facebook

You can use various posting techniques successfully on Facebook. We’ve captured some general guidelines for organizations to follow. We encourage you to play around with them to find the best methods for your particular business and following.

Best Practices

• Include an eye-catching visual with every post to increase engagement.
• Share videos. People watch over 8 billion videos (100 million hours of video) every day on Facebook.
• Stay positive.
• Add an exclamation mark now and then to add excitement and grab users’ attention.
• Ask questions to encourage readers to leave comments and share your post with others.
• Use one or two hashtags to engage in more extensive discussions.
• Consider creating your own branded hashtags to use consistently (e.g., #justdoit).
• Stick to around 40-80 characters for maximum performance.

3. Writing Captions for Instagram

Some businesses do a superb job of posting quality, captivating photos on Instagram, but they struggle with writing complementary captions. Captions can increase engagement and help you connect with readers in a way that images may not.

Best Practices

• Mind the caption length limit, which is 2,200 You can also use up to 30 hashtags per post.
• Keep in mind that just because you can write a lot doesn’t mean you always should. The ideal length for regular Instagram posts is 138-150 characters.
• Shoot for 5-10 hashtags to grow your audience while avoiding “shadow banning.” Make sure each one you use is highly relevant.
• Think about how you can add to your photo and increase engagement. It may include asking a question or adding a call to action (CTA).
• Break up longer posts into different sections by hitting the enter/return key a couple of times.
• Add emojis creatively.

4. Posting on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional B2B platform that connects different organizations and encourages collaboration. It’s a great place to share news and insights from your business or industry, along with enlightening work-related topics. Keep in mind that this platform is more text-based than many other social media channels.

Best Practices

• The optimal length for a LinkedIn status update is around 100 characters, but you can go longer. At 140 characters, LinkedIn will cut off messages with a “See More” button.
• The platform discriminates against status updates containing links, pushing more businesses and individuals to take advantage of LinkedIn Publishing (posting an entire article on the channel).
• If you want to publish a post on LinkedIn, longer articles tend to perform better. Aim for around 2,000-word posts. Include a headline, subheaders, and other elements to organize your content and make it scannable and easy to read.
• Add up to 3-5 relevant hashtags.

5. Pinning on Pinterest

Like Instagram, Pinterest is a highly visual platform. Pin descriptions can help boost engagement and describe the images you share.

Best Practices

• Use proper grammar and punctuation.
• Keep an informative tone.
• Avoid using “salesy” language.
• Don’t use hashtags.
• Write clear titles and descriptions. Use up to 100 characters for titles and 500 characters for descriptions.
• Use precise language to describe your Pins accurately.
• Include relevant keywords in your descriptions and a CTA that makes users want to click to learn more.
• Your brand should be the focal point, so don’t forget to include your logo.
• Learn more best practices for different types of Pins on Pinterest Business.

3 General Tips to Keep in Mind for Social Media Posting

Here are three quick tips to remember when you sit down to compose some posts and publish content on various social platforms.

• Be genuine: Authenticity can go a long way. Avoid being too promotional or salesy on social media. People would much rather engage with an actual human – with real emotions and opinions.
• Keep it concise: When in doubt, keep your posts short and to the point.
• Stay evergreen: Most social media posts don’t stay front and center for long. They can quickly get buried in users’ feeds. However, if your posts are evergreen, you can easily reshare the same content again in the future, saving yourself time and getting in front of more people.

Engaging Social Media Posts Start with Awesome Content

If you need help crafting authentic, concise, and engaging social media posts, we would love to help. We offer packages for our clients that include blog articles, social media posts, and more. Don’t hesitate to inquire about building a custom package that addresses your unique business needs.

Learn more about our Content Marketing Services.

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