We get a lot of questions from our clients asking us what to post on social media accounts. How do I align my messaging with my company brand? The amount of content I need to put out is really overwhelming, how can I organize myself? We heard you and wanted to make a guide to a repeatable ‘what to post on social media’ strategy.
We are going to look at the three major groupings of content and specifically list out some content ideas that can fit inside each. Depending on your company and the social media platforms you’re currently on we’ll talk about which social media posts may fit you best. Finally, we’ll talk about how messaging changes based on different types of posts.
- 3 Major Content Groupings
- Types of Social Media Posts
- Types of Post That Are Best For Each Platform
- How Messaging Changes Based On Post
3 Types Major Content Grouping
Multi-Purpose Content
First off, we want to make sure that you’re not overwhelmed by the amount of content you need to post on your social media platforms. Having planned out content will ease your anxiety and make posting on your social media fun! We do this by using a concept called multi-purpose content.
Using this strategy will save you time in the long run as you’re reusing content multiple times. Essentially, multi-purpose content is taking a long form piece of content (a blog for example) and breaking it down into smaller pieces. This could look like 2 Instagram posts and 4 Twitter posts. We’ve written an article that goes in depth into using multi-purpose content, check it out to learn more.
Recurring Content
The next strategy that you can use to help you get organized is called recurring content.
To take off the stress of thinking of new ideas each month, think about creating a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly series. This takes the amount of posts you need to think about down drastically. For example, you post 3 times a week per month meaning that you post a total of 12 times. Now let’s say that you post a customer testimonial every two weeks, a product feature every week and an industry update every month. Your product feature will make up 4 of those posts, customer testimonial will be 2 and industry update will be 1. So you went from having to think of 12 different things to now only thinking about 5 posts. Which is much more manageable.
Unique Content
Finally, fill in any of the gaps between your recurring content and multi-purpose content with unique content. This content will most likely take up most of your time in terms of thinking and planning out. An example of unique content is if you sell donuts and July 5th is national donut day so you decide to make a post about it. Since this is outside of your traditional recurring content, it’s considered unique content. If you’re not sure what type of unique content to do, look at competitors. See what they’re doing and determine if you’re able to do something similar.
All in all, there are 3 types of content that will make up your entire content calendar, multi-purpose content, recurring content and unique content. Breaking the content up into these three categories makes it more manageable as you’re able to identify content you have and content you need.
Types of Social Media Posts
It can be a challenge thinking of fresh social media ideas but some topics include:
- Service or product posts
- Company news
- Client success or client testimonials
- Industry news
- Customer questions
- Informational personality/brand post
- Behind the scenes looks
- Previews and teasers
- Polls and surveys
- Interesting quotes
- Social media or press mentions
These ideas can be used when planning recurring or unique content. Use these ideas and cater them towards your own business and your brand. Got your first sale? Ask for a review and post the review on your social media to build credibility and trust. Make posts about your business values, visions and beliefs to allow your customers and potential customers to get to your brand. There are many ways you can take and change these ideas to fit your needs.
Example of Content Planning in action:
What to Post on Social Media Platforms
You also need to keep in mind the platform that you’re posting content on. The type of content you post on LinkedIn will be different then the content you post on Instagram. This doesn’t mean that you can only stick to these types of posts but it’s good to have a general understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each platform.
| Platform | Type of Content |
| Videos, blog posts, educational and entertaining content, a little more informative but still have a laid back feeling | |
| Breaking news, GIFS (short videos), responding to customers questions & comments | |
| Product photos, behind the scenes, user generated content (clients tagging or using your products), quotes, very laid back | |
| Job and career information, blog posts, industry updates, company news, professional content | |
| Infographics, pictures, step-by-step photo guides |
As mentioned previously, don’t feel like you have to stick to these types of content for each platform. You could get away with posting the same content on both Facebook and LinkedIn. You might need to switch the messaging for Instagram but you can still post about the same topic. Just keep in mind that a job and career information post will most likely perform better on a platform such as LinkedIn.
How Messaging Changes with Social Media Post
Now that you know the 3 different board types of content, types of social media posts and what to post on social media platforms. The next step would be to understand how messaging associated with each type of post will change. For example, an industry news post will have a more formal feel versus a post about behind the scenes. Let’s take a look at a real example.
Topic of Post
| Type of Social Media Post | Messaging |
| Behind the scenes | “Something very exciting is coming so make sure to keep an eye out!” |
| Industry Update | “A recent report by hootsuite found that 80% of customers shop online before going to bed. How are you going to be taken advantage of this insight” |
As you can see the wording between the two is different. The behind the scenes social media post will have a more laid back, excited sort of feeling whereas the industry update post will be more serious and informative as it’s talking about data and trends. Keep this in mind when you’re planning out your social media posts. What would your customers prefer?
Product vs Brand Post
The same thing can be said for a product vs a brand post
| Type of Social Media Post | Messaging |
| Product | “Our hair serum penetrates the hair strands to smooth and hydrate leaving your hair silky and shiny” |
| Brand | “At Company X we believe that everyone should get access to high quality hair products at an affordable price” |
The messaging between a product post and a brand post is very different. The product post highlights why your product is different from others in the market by emphasizing features and qualities of the actual product. Whereas the brand post is about what your company values and believes in. In a brand post you’re not advertising or pointing towards a specific product but to the company as a whole.
Steps to Developing Your Social Post
The next set of steps is to actually develop and write your social media post. We have written out a thorough process that you can follow here!
The quick breakdown is as follows:
- Identify your topic
- Select your approach/delivery
- Write your messaging
- Select the appropriate platforms
- Develop the media required
- Post!
Where To Start
If you’re not sure where to begin, start with an audit of your existing content. What type of content do you currently post? What social media channels are you using? Are you posting the same things on the channels? How often are you posting? Can you set up a recurring content flow that creates a more organized experience? From there you’re able to establish a baseline and determine what you need to do first.