Effective Best Practices for Sharing Content

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Video Transcript | Intro

When it comes to sharing content across your social properties, there’s a general set of best practices you should exercise wherever you post. 

Attention-Grabbing Headline or Caption 

A strong headline or caption is key to grabbing a reader’s attention. Write copy that strikes a balance between being clear and emotionally evocative. Take the time to brainstorm a few variations of the copy that will accompany your infographic, image or blog post. When sharing the same piece of content across multiple networks, optimize how you will present it on each platform. For example, you can snip a section of an infographic you’ve created and use it as an image to accompany a post on Facebook. On Twitter, you can use a key fact from the infographic as your tweet, with an added link to the full version. 

Visual Appeal

Visual content provides a great boost to engagement. Use a mixture of photos, images with text overlay and videos to enhance the value and visual appeal of your posts. You don’t need to add a visual element to every single update, but do keep an eye on how visuals impact your engagement and adjust your course accordingly. 

Variety 

To keep your audience interested, vary your content regularly - a mix of questions, polls, and calls for user-generated content are all great ways to facilitate a conversation. 

Call-To-Action

Aim to end your posts with a clear call to action. For example, on Facebook, you can announce the opening of a new location and entice people to comment on the post for a small reward. Or on Twitter, you could simply ask for retweets. 

Optimal Posting Times

Optimal posting times differ for every network. As a guideline, don’t release too many messages to the same network at once. Instead, focus on testing both your headlines and your posting times to see what gets you the highest levels of engagement. 

Limited Self-Promotion

Keep self-promotional content at around 1/3rd of all content you publish. While your audience likely follows you because they’re interested in your products and services, focusing on building rapport and consistently sharing valuable information will build brand loyalty over the long haul. 

Company Owned Content

Encourage your employees to share your company’s owned content through their social profiles. This is an effective way of magnifying brand messaging without spending too much time talking about yourself through your company’s social networks.

Third-Party Tools

Lastly, to save time posting your content, use a tool like Hootsuite to pre-schedule or auto-schedule your messages in advance. Make sure to keep an eye on the response from your community so you can address their comments in a timely fashion. 

Recap

So to recap, write strong, clear posts tailored to the particular network to which you publish. Use visual content to increase engagement and vary your content regularly to keep your audience interested. Don’t post too many updates to a single network at once and aim to end your posts with a clear call to action. Keep self-promotional content to under 30%, encourage employees to share your content through their social profiles and schedule content in advance to save yourself time. 

Looking for more? Check out our blog and learn how to create a social media strategy in 8 easy steps!