Most business owners start posting actively to social media and then stop as quickly as they started for lack of ideas. A well-stocked content helps keep a company’s social media presence full, even during the busiest weeks. It also makes it easier to get found by the right people and persuade them into customers. This guide covers four types of posts that build trust and bring in customers. Each one comes with an example and a short list of ideas you can use this week.
Social Media Content Types to Post About in Business
Creating content randomly and without a plan doesn’t lead to engagement – in fact, it can turn followers away. A strategically shaped mix of posts allows potential customers to learn about the company, its products/services, and the people behind it, as well as engage and share. Below, we suggest four types of social media content ideas for businesses, of which you should have a few examples ready to post each week.
1. Educational and Authority-Building Content
The educational content is aimed at building the company’s authority among customers. This group is usually the most popular since people are generally interested in learning new things about their field of work. Besides, this type of content is often the most shareable.
Example in Action
A local accountant’s office regularly uploads 30-second videos discussing one particular tax deadline businesses tend to forget about. The video answers the most common questions asked about this date and is found by clients searching for similar information.
Ideas to Try
- Share a tip regularly based on your own expertise and experience.
- Share common myths about your service or product.
- Post a video or a carousel about how something in your niche is done.
2. Behind-the-Scenes and Humanization
Clients want to deal with people, not companies. They always want to learn more about how you do things, so behind-the-scenes is an excellent idea to both market your services and products as well as humanize your business and communicate with potential clients on a personal level by providing them with an inside view of how you operate.
Example in Action
A local bakery uploads a video of the bakers at work before the store opens to the public. Many customers who comment on the post mention that seeing how the bakery operates makes them trust the brand more.
Ideas to Try
- Share a brief story about a person in your company.
- Show your clients what goes into making your product or providing your service.
- Upload a lesson you learned or a failure you experienced in the workplace.
3. Interactive and Engagement-Driven Content
Customers want their opinion to matter. Prompts that require interaction, polls, and votes make this sentiment the center of the engagement strategy. Additionally, such content requires little to no investment on the company’s side.
Example in Action
A fitness studio asks their clients to vote on which weekly theme they would like to see first on Fridays. This allows the studio to plan their content around the clients’ interests while giving them a chance to participate.
Ideas to Try
- Create a poll asking which product or service they prefer.
- Run these polls as part of stories or use question stickers to ask open questions.
- Ask for the clients’ opinions or finish a sentence in the comments.
4. Promotional and Product-Focused Content
Posts with a promotional focus should be customer-centric and start with the description of the client’s needs and how the company can help. Product-oriented content should have a purpose as well, such as showing its usefulness, giving instructions about the use of the product, or publishing reviews. Such posts should comprise no more than a fifth of all the published content.
Example in Action
The skincare company educates its clients on winter skincare by publishing a video with a customer’s routine for dry skin. The company shows how their product fits in the routine and highlights its benefits, thus advertising the cream subtly while providing useful information.
Ideas to Try
- Publish client testimonials and reviews of your service/product.
- Create a video or carousel demonstrating the use of your service/product.
- Make sure there is a call-to-action in all your promotional posts.
Now that we have discovered what kinds of content will be beneficial to your social media posts, take a look at your content calendar for the next two weeks. Did you plan on posting all categories, or did you miss some? Examine your content calendar and count the number of posts in each category. Are some categories under-represented, or are some not included? If some categories are under-represented, try to plan more posts of these kinds and fewer of the ones that dominate your feed.
Conclusion
Social media content ideas help one plan their media matrix more efficiently and entice the target audience to follow the business’s page. The main ideas are to educate and involve the audience, provide information about the company’s inner workings, and promote the brand’s values.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are social media content ideas?
These are suggestions or topics that a company can post on social media sites. The topics include helpful, personal, and promotional information about the company.
2. What is the ideal frequency of posts?
Most businesses see the best results posting three to five times a week.
3. What content types give the most engagement?
The most engaging content is educational, behind-the-scenes, interactive and promotional information.
4. What is the ideal ratio of promotional to non-promotional posts?
The ideal ratio is 80% non-promotional and 20% promotional posts.
5. Where can I get my social media content ideas?
The first source of content ideas should be the questions that your customers frequently ask you.
Open your content calendar today. Use these social media content ideas to fill the gaps and plan your next two weeks. Then talk to Xpo Outdoors about a website that turns those followers into customers.
