With organic reach on the decline, it's become harder than ever to reach your audience without spending a good amount of money on your ad budget.
But if we know how the algorithms of social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn work, we can actually create content that gets more engagement, and much lower cost-per-result if you're running an ad.
First of all, create content for people, not algorithms.
I'm going to show you a few ways to create content so that the algorithm favors your posts, but remember, the bottom-line is to add value to real users. If your target audience doesn't find your content relevant or useful, your post won't get reach or engagement.
1. Use Photos/Videos of Real People in Your Post.
Stock graphics may be easier and quicker to use, but there's definitely a downside to it. It's observed that posts with real and relevant images of people tend to get up to 40% more engagement than posts with just text and stock graphics
Yes, that includes stock photos of people as well - the audience can tell the difference! What's more, it's not just the audience. The algorithms are very smart. If they detect that your post is made up of generic stock graphics, they will push down your post and prevent it from reaching more people.
2. Personal, Human Stories Work.
Building on the previous point, combining personal, real images of people with their story is a very powerful way to get people to respond to your content.
Let's remember why people are on social media in the first place. They're not here to see ads and to be told about your product.
People are on social media to see what their friends are doing, what issues do they care about and what are their thoughts and feelings on those issues. They're here to connect with people.
As marketers, we need to understand this and make sure that we add value to their social media experience, not interrupt it.
3. Know Your Platform.
Every kind of content does not perform well on every platform.
Understand why users come online on the platform you're targeting. Then, tailor your content accordingly. For example, people come on LinkedIn to grow professionally. Any kind of content that is inspirational, educational/informative or helps in skill development will most likely be received favorably by the audience.
On Facebook, people like to share their opinions and engage in debate over current topics that they care about. How can you create posts so that you/your brand can be part of this conversation?
Instagram users are younger than Facebook users. This platform is casual and visual. Eye-candy, quick gratification and aspirational content work the best on this platform.
Knowing the nuances and culture of each social media platform will go a long way in ensuring that you create the right kind of content that makes people engage.
4. The Correct Way to Use Links
If you share a link that directs people away from the platform to another webpage, the algorithms will not be in your favor.
It makes sense if you think from the point of view of the social platforms. They want people to stay within their platform! Hence, they've programmed the algorithms in such a way that external links will hardly be shown to any of your followers.
For example, if you want to share a video from your YouTube channel with your LinkedIn followers, don't copy paste the YouTube link. Re-upload the video onto LinkedIn. That way, LinkedIn's algorithms will recognize that it's a native video and push it in front of relevant people, encouraging them to interact.
Same goes for a blog. Don't just share a Medium link. Publish the blog on LinkedIn.
But, sometimes you want to leverage your followers on LinkedIn and want to drive traffic to your own website or blog. What then?
The way to do it is to create a post for LinkedIn that is relevant and follows the above principles. Then you can naturally include your link within the post. See the example below:
Organically inserting links within content is acceptable. Only sharing links is not a good idea if you want to reach people.
Another way of sharing links is to not share it in the main post at all, but to share it as the first comment. This is exploiting a loophole in the algorithm. If it does not detect a link within the post, it will give it much higher reach, even though the link is right there on the first comment.
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So, that's how you create social media posts that work. If you're not applying these principles, your message is reaching fewer people than it has the potential to.
This is not the final word on winning social media content, especially as this landscape is constantly and very quickly evolving. If you got some value of this article, leave a comment below and let me know!