Five Types of Posts for Businesses: Instagram, Facebook and Twitter Brand Building Guide
Here are some questions people often come to us with:
How do I increase my follower on Instagram? How do I turn Facebook fans into customers? What are some good ideas for posts on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter?
Coming up with new, quality ideas when it comes to posting social media content can get exhausting and often, we get stuck in a routine of posting the same type of photo/video. When stuck on what to post, think of the following five post styles.
Lifestyle
Show how your product or service can be used in an organic setting. No, I don’t mean outdoors but rather where your product would likely be used. A bottle of Coca-Cola on a picnic table on a summer day for example. Take your product out into the world and give customers an idea of how it could be incorporated and bring value to their lives.
Behind the Scenes
Showcase your team. Fun staff photos, employee headshots with write-ups on their role within the company. Factory walk-throughs, workplace tours and action shots are all great behind the scenes ideas that may be worthy of a post!
Remember, one of the main reasons we want to build up Instagram is so people can feel connected with the brand beyond just enjoying the product. Behind the scenes content lets them feel like you are sharing a secret with them and emits a feeling of community.
Showcase
Nice lighting, no distractions and a close up of your product. Showcase exactly how you want your product to be viewed and don’t be afraid to include details on what sets your product apart from your competitors. Often, brands can get too caught up in posting behind the scenes or team based content and forget that their page is being followed because fans wanted to see the products.
User Submissions
As marketers, we want customers to understand immediately how our product can integrate into their lifestyle. A user submission not only shows the product as part of someone else’s life, but also gives the added benefit of their post acting as a powerful testimonial; think, if someone is making a post on social media about the new Dyson Vacuum, they must REALLY love the product.
When not necessarily selling a product or service, user submissions can still be a great post. Musicians can upload people covering their songs, artists can showcase their artwork being posted by a local museum or newspaper and a model can snap a screenshot of their shoots being shown in a magazine or online gallery.
Contests
My personal favourite form of post for GROWING a powerful social media following fast the contest. Contests work as you can request followers to take various actions that promote your page relatively cheaply to other paid measures.
The primary consideration you must make is what the incentive (prize) will be for your contest. It does not necessarily require a huge monetary value to be an effective prize, in fact I encourage keeping it below $200; this will give you greater room in your budget to run further contests throughout the year. A prize can sometimes be just cash ie) a Visa gift card, a cheque or some $20 bills straight from your cash register/piggy bank OR it can be something tangible, a pair of tickets to a local sports game/upcoming concert, a physical item from your shop. The possibilities are quite large; my only other recommendation in terms of a prize is to keep it relevant to your target audience. It doesn’t serve you much good if you are a high-end restaurant and are giving away McDonalds Big Mac vouchers or if you are a model looking to build an international following and are giving away tickets to a hockey game in Sterling Alaska. Once you have an incentivizing, relevant prize you can begin to decide what actions you’d like your viewers to take.
Clearly, our goal is to gain followers so that should always be a priority however, there are other valuable actions, contest runners should consider. Realize however, the more we ask for a potential entry, the more rewarding our prize must be. Other actions I recommend are any selection of the following:
- Share/regram/retweet this contest post
- Exposes your contest to exponentially more people
- Tag who you would share the prize with
- Further exposes the contest and adds credibility while increasing comment/like numbers on the post
- Follow our page
- Can also include, “like us on Facebook” or “follow on Twitter”
- Like/comment on ‘x’ number of posts in our gallery
- Tag us on your contest entry post
- This works well and is necessary when the contest is not a random draw. If you are running an art submission contest, you need a way to find entries
- Use our hashtag
- Create a contest or brand specific hashtag such as “#KeenanContest2018”
On a lot of platforms, including Instagram with its new algorithmic feed, ‘hot’ posts meaning ones which see a lot of engagement quickly are shown more often than posts which are not. In saying this, it should be a priority to include a required action or two which promote the contest post. I would almost always include “share this post” and “tag a friend” in your bundle of actions.
Here is a contest I crafted for a client who wanted to run a contest on Facebook and happens to be the House DJ of the Vancouver Canucks. She opted to give away a pair of tickets to the lucky winner of a random draw. The actions we required for this post were a bit different as we cut a deal with the venue to have them supply the tickets on their dollar in return for including them in the post; hence the 3rd action.
It may have been effective to include the “tag a friend” action, especially given the shared nature of the prize; although, without this we still managed to score 450 new page likes and 42,000 views in the first 3 days of the contest!
Also note that although this contest was run on Facebook, we easily could have changed the actions to be Instagram or Twitter relevant.
Unfortunately, post captions on Instagram do not allow for clickable links, however if you are running an off-Instagram contest, you may place a link in your bio; a landing page integrated with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter widgets and an e-mail submission box would be optimal, this however is very technical and could be pricey for those without the technical know-how. Another option would be to link to a Facebook or blog post describing the contest.
As with most digital strategies, much of what you should do depends on your goals and specific situation. Consider how much you value gaining followers, increasing engagement or gathering e-mails before publishing your contest and you’re well on your way to a successful campaign.
About Our Media Company, Longhouse
Longhouse Media is a Langley based business just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia that serves new, growing and established businesses. Longhouse provides customers with synergistic digital solutions that add value to businesses and personal brands. We keep up to date on the latest technology and growth strategies so you can focus on running your business! Some of the services we offer are: websites, digital advertising on platforms such as Facebook and Google Adwords, social media management, video production and graphic design.
At Longhouse Media, we offer social media management services at a reasonable price. If you are in the Vancouver region we will send a professional photographer to your location once a month and will then post high-quality content to social media channels of your choice such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter throughout the month. We include converting captions and hashtags in order to bring you new customers and to entice sales from existing fans of your brand. Visit https://www.longhouse.co/social-media-management/ to find out more about this service!
If you would like to know more about strategies for websites, social media, digital marketing or content creation such as video production, visit www.longhouse.co
Alternatively, we can be contacted here.
