This story originally appeared on Buffer
Not all content needs to be shared everywhere. And not all content is suitable for every social media platforms.
It’s all right to post entirely different things on different platforms. In fact, it might even help you to boost your engagement.
For example, if you take a look at our Twitter and Instagram accounts, you’ll notice that we post entirely different things on each platform.
But how do you decide what to post on each social media platform?
To help you with your social media marketing strategy, we would love to share some suggestions and examples that have worked for us and others.
By the end of this post, we hope you’ll know exactly what to share on each of your social media profiles.
What to post on each social media platform
Every platform has its own audience. And each audience has their own expectations for the things they want to see on the platform – that can affect how well your social media posts perform.
Since every platform is different, this guide will cover each of the following six major social media platforms separately.
Here are the general guidelines:
LinkedIn: Jobs, company news, and professional content
Pinterest: Infographics and step-by-step photo guides
Google+: Blog posts that you want to rank on Google
Once you’ve decided on what to post to each social media platform, we would love to help you craft the perfect post for every social platform in one seamless experience.
What to post on Facebook
Videos and live videos
Our goal on Facebook has been to build our brand and engage our fans.
Recently, videos and live videos have proven to be the best types of content for our Facebook Page.
Our video posts generated the highest average reach among all post types. The average engagement on our video posts is almost on par with that on our photo posts, which have the highest average engagement.
Buzzsumo analyzed 68 million Facebook posts and found that a similar trend: videos have higher average engagement than images and links.
We focus on creating educational videos for our Facebook Page:
- How-to guides: These are videos where Brian Peters, our Digital Marketing Strategist, share social media tips and tricks.
- Blog post summaries: For these videos, we summarize the key ideas from our blog posts and turn them into short video clips using Animoto.
Here’s an example of a Facebook video that has done well for us recently:
Blog posts and curated content
After videos, blog posts and curated content are the next types of posts that do well on our Facebook Page.
Apart from sharing our blog posts, we also curate high-quality (proven) content from third-party Pages and sites. This Facebook posting strategy has helped us grow our Facebook Page’s reach, engagement, and Likes over the past year.
Our Page Likes grew by over 40 percent over the past year.
We have found posts that are both educational and entertaining do the best for us on Facebook. Here’s a recent example:
What to post on Instagram
High-res photos
Instagram has become a place where people post only the best photos (and videos) on their profile.
After interviewing and surveying 11,000 13 to 24-year-olds around the world, Facebook recommends marketers to “blend in to stand out”:
Here are a few types of high-quality photos you can post to Instagram:
Product photos: If you sell physical products such as fashion or food, you can post high-resolution photos of your product in various settings. Califia Farms (@califiafarms) does a great job with this. (See more examples here from the best brands on Instagram, according to HubSpot.)
Behind-the-scenes: Another popular type of Instagram photos from brands are behind-the-scenes photos. These could be photos of people in the company, events, or the making of a product (e.g. how a dish is prepared).
User-generated…
