What else should your social media strategy include on your facebook, twitter and instagram pages?

Now that you have a framework, ask yourself… Does your existing content enable you to post with purpose? To post with purpose, use what makes your audience care, share, aware, and convert. Let’s break those down:

1. Content that makes makes your audience care.

What type of content makes audiences care? The general mantra in social media marketing is don’t interrupt what interests people—be what interests people. Research from Paddle Consulting shows that interesting content breaks down into the following categories:

🤣 Funny Content: Help people laugh.

Funny content isn’t limited to jokes and memes (though there’s a place for that). Finding your funny can come in the form of your playful brand voice in post and reply copy, or relatable observations and videos that resonate with your audience. (At Sculpt, we’re fans of the latter: Watch “ Social Media IRL “)

Who and what makes your audience laugh?

Today more than ever, the comment IS the content. To leverage this trend, pay attention to popular and viral posts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (ideally, catch them before they go super viral). Your snarky, relatable reply here has a high likelihood of earning free reach and significant distribution.

B2C brands like Wendy’s and MoonPie know that best, and have amassed millions of engagements and earned impressions as a result.

When the tweets are as broken as the ice cream machine. https://t.co/esdndK1iFm

— Wendy’s (@Wendys) November 24, 2017

👩‍🏫 Useful Content: Help people learn something new. 

Informative, relevant, and interesting is the key here. What would your target audience value learning more about? Useful content varies across the customer purchase journey, but could include topics like:

• Top of Funnel: Advice from internal (and industry) experts, timely tips, facts and stats, and curated resources. Publish these often.
• Middle of Funnel: Lead magnet resources, case studies and customer success stories with clear takeaways. Publish these with paid, or moderately organically.
• Bottom of Funnel: Proprietary tools, tripwires, and core offers to solve their problem now. Publish these with paid, or infrequently organically.
• Ascension / Re-engagement: Interesting and creative ways to use your solution, or improve their results. Publish these moderately to often.

Best practice would say keep useful content—like all social content— ‘snackable.’ As in, bite-sized advice.

While I generally agree, the rule changes with the format and affinity to your audience.

Tutorial and demo videos that walkthrough a process step-by-step will get devoured on Youtube and Facebook—especially Groups.

On the other hand, you might experience better engagement breaking down blogs into 5-6 individual Instagram Stories versus one long text caption in a post.

The more the content delivers on the value it promised, the more likely it will get consumed

😍 Beautiful Content: Help people fall in ‘like.’ Stunning visual content has a powerful effect on engagement. Regardless of your line of business, strive to find your brand’s natural beauty.

Tips for Creating Beautiful Visual Content

1. Think “thumb-stopping.”
2. Embrace natural light in photography.
3. Keep shots condensed, closeup, and interesting.
4. Use primary and consistent colors to strike a chord.
5. Bring out your people’s personalities.
6. Tell a story through a series.
7. Incorporate slight movement to bring still photos to life.

Pro tip: Long gone are the days where photographers held all of the keys to great social content. Experiment with mobile editing apps like Canva, Flixel, or Mojo to make beautiful content on the fly.

😮 Inspiring: Help people feel inspired through storytelling. 

Your customers are aspirational—they’re striving to become a better version of themselves. You can help with stories of people (and customers) overcoming odds and reaching their potential.

YETI positions their uber-successful, video-based content strategy around a mission to inspire through stories. “We celebrate stories from the wild. If adventure and grit is at the heart of the story, then it’s a story that YETI will tell.”

If video isn’t an option, try a still photo series similar to how Humans of New York tells stories for its passionate community of 18+ million on Facebook: Close-up, natural shots of people exhibiting raw emotion with accompanying quotes.

2. Content that makes your audience share.

What type of content makes audiences share?

Engagement is an emotional connection. Research shows that high arousal emotions like excitement, humor, and happiness heavily influence online sharing.

(By the way, ever wonder why divisive political news ends up in your feeds so frequently? Anger, anxiety, and stress work the same way.)

If you’re interested in the psychology behind going viral, I highly recommend reading Contagious: Why Things Catch On, by Jonah Berger, or watching his course on LinkedIn.

Another fascinating philosophy on sharable content comes from the data science team at BuzzFeed (surprise, surprise). According to Publisher Dao Nguyen in her TED Talk, every piece of content has a ‘job’ to do for your audience. To influence sharing, focus on these jobs:

1. Content that reinforces our sense of self-identity. (“This is so me”)
2. Content that help us connect with someone else, and reinforce a shared experience, sense of community, or relationship. (“This is so you” or “This is so us”)
3. Content that improves our lives by teaching us something about ourselves, and contains wisdom worthy of passing on. (“This explains everything…”)
4. Content that makes us feel something and touches on high arousal emotions. (“This restored my faith in humanity.”)

3. Content that makes your audience aware.

What types of content generates brand awareness?

According to author Daryl Weber in his book Brand Seduction, a brand is a collection of unconscious associations in your consumer’s mind. Help your audience recognize those associations – all of the things that make you valuable, unique, and relevant in their lives. Brand awareness content may include content that…

1. Features your people, place, products, & process.
2. Keeps a consistent visual voice by incorporating your brand identity (colors, assets) and a signature style.
3. Highlights and educates customers on the problems you solve.

This example from ICR IOWA‘s Talent Attraction campaign is a good example of all 3 principles rolled up in one.

And finally…

4. Content that makes your audience convert.

(Sorry to break the rhyme.) By following these steps you’ve designed a content strategy full of value. Now, it’s time to make your ask. Or as Gary Vee would say, your ‘jab, jab, jab, right hook.‘

Content designed to convert often comes into play in your paid media strategy, but it should be part of your planning, too.

What types of content makes your audience take action?

• Content that speaks to their motivations, anxieties, impulses.

Remember the persona research you did when digging into your most valuable customers? That’s going to come in handy. What issues (related to the problem your business solves) keep them up at night? What stops them from taking action?

• Content that speaks to your audience, directly.

Remember that your customer is the hero of your brand story. With some exceptions (privacy matters), referencing your target audience in copy the same way they identify themselves will be highly effective in driving action. For instance, “5 things Digital Marketing Agency Owners Need to Stop Doing to Grow” would get my click.

• Content that reduces the friction to taking action.

Make it easy to take the first step. For instance, social media contests provide a valuable incentive—the opportunity to get something free or first—in exchange for an action that’s valuable to the brand, like gathering contact info.

For retailers, limited-time, social-media-exclusive discounts can lower the risk in trying a product.

For service providers, demo, tutorial, or webinar videos can demonstrate the value of a solution before hiring them.

• Content that incorporates proven formulas.

No need to reinvent the wheel. There are dozens of copywriting formulas that have proven to influence conversions. Buffer covers 27 here, and Copyhackers has a few more.

When you begin implementing a social media strategy for your business, one of the first questions you'll ask yourself is this one — Should my business be on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram?

Those three social media sites offer considerable opportunities to connect and engage with a network, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic to your site. But they're also incredibly different in terms of purpose.

Ultimately, Facebook's purpose is to connect people with their personal networks including friends and family. People use Facebook to share photos, videos, and general updates on their lives.

Twitter, on the other hand, is used to share ideas, real-time information, and trending news. While people may also use Twitter to connect with friends and family, they largely use it for a bigger purpose — to connect to the wider world and discover what's happening (in 140 characters or less).

Instagram is used to share photos and videos. People mainly use this app to post their "highlight reel" and follow friends as well as influencers. This is how users become a part of a social media community.

Of course, this still begs the question — where does your business fit into all this? To explore the pros and cons of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, we've created a comprehensive breakdown of the three platforms.

Keep reading to figure out which platform is a better business investment for your company.

Twitter vs. Facebook

Twitter is primarily meant for sharing informational and succicnt snippets while Facebook is meant for connecting with members of your personal network and sharing more in-depth content..

And what about Instagram?

Twitter vs. Instagram

While Twitter is used for sharing ideas and catching up with news and trends around the world, Instagram is meant for sharing your best photos and videos with your followers, as well as interacting and engaging with influencers.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Users

Let's start by taking a look at Twitter versus Facebook versus Instagram users.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Demographics

To start, let's consider the potential demographic your business could reach on each platform.

Here are some quick and informative facts:

Twitter Demographic Facts:

• 24% of U.S. adults are on Twitter.
• 40% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18-29.
• Less than 20% of people ages 50 and up use Twitter.

Facebook Demographic Facts:

• 70% of U.S. adults are on Facebook.
• 80% of Facebook users are between the ages of 18-29.
• 65% of people ages 50 and up use Facebook.

Instagram Demographic Facts:

• 37% of U.S. adults are on Instagram.
• 75% of Instagram users are 18-24.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Engagement

It's equally critical you determine quality over quantity — how long does each site's audience stay on the platform? Or, alternatively, how many minutes per day do they spend on each?

Twitter Engagement Facts:

• As of Q1 2019, Twitter averaged 330 million monthly active users.
• About 71% of Twitter users say they use the platform to get news.
• You have no choice but to engage users with quickly digestible content since the platform has a 140-character limit.

Facebook Engagement Facts:

• Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide.
• As of Q1 of 2021, Facebook reported nearly 1.88 billion daily active users.
• In the U.S., Facebook accounts for over 60% of monthly social media visits.

Instagram Engagement Facts:

• 59% of Instagram users visit the app daily.

• Accounts with 1,000-5,000 followers typically have a 5.6% engagement rate. On the other hand, accounts with over 1 million followers, average a 1.97% engagement rate.

With all of the above stats in mind, no matter how many followers you have, if you can appeal to your audience with the right content, you'll likely have the best engagement rates on Facebook. Here's some research by Statista to prove it. This is a look at the most popular mobile social networking apps in the U.S., as of September 2019, by user engagement (in minutes/ month). Facebook wins by a substantial amount.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Usage

Here are some points to consider while choosing the right platform for your business to use:

• With less than 140 characters to convey your brand's message, you might think of Twitter as your business' "elevator pitch". What do you want to get across to your audience quickly and succinctly?
• Facebook is your opportunity to engage more in-depth with an audience. You can create full business pages, share videos, and images, and further incentivize prospects to engage with your brand (by offering 10% off if they "like" your business page, for instance).
• With Instagram, you can create an interactive community. This is the platform where users are more likely to engage. People go to Instagram and expect to see influencers and follow brands they like.

Twitter Ads vs Facebook vs Instagram Ads

In general, advertising on Facebook and Instagram allows you to reach a larger audience. Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, they offer similar ad tools. Additionally, Facebook ads come with some impressive targeting tools, so you're able to narrow down salary, purchase behavior, hobbies, Facebook communities, and more.

Facebook advertising's interface is relatively easy and intuitive for the user. Facebook ads can be relatively cheap, as well — in fact, Facebook points out that, "Some people spend more on coffee each day than they do on their ad campaigns". While it depends on the campaign you're running, you can often set a budget as little as $2 to $3 per day.

Twitter also offers targeting capabilities, including purchase behavior, language, interest, and followers. However, Twitter advertising is typically more expensive than Facebook.

It may be worth the extra money, though — engagement rates for Twitter adscan be as high as 1-3%, much higher than Facebook’s average CTR of 0.119%.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram for Business

Ultimately, it's likely best to try Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for a while if you're unsure which one works better for your brand. Over time, you'll gain valuable insights into how well your posts perform on these sites, enabling you to dedicate more time to one over the other. Since they're free to use, there's no harm in initially trying all three.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in February 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.