Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and more provide incredible opportunities for businesses to connect with customers and promote their brands.
However, simply posting random content will not help you engage your audience or promote your business effectively.
You need to create social media posts that capture attention and inspire engagement. Here are some tips to help you create more engaging, shareable social media content to promote your small business.
Know Your Audience and Goals
First, you need to understand who your target audience is on each social platform and what outcomes you want from your social media marketing.
For example, are you trying to drive website traffic, increase sales, collect emails, or build brand awareness?
Tailor your posts to align with specific goals and craft content that appeals directly to your followers’ interests.
Pay attention to the type of content and messaging that garners the most shares and engagement already.
Optimize Visual Content
Today’s social media feeds are visually dominated, so high-quality images and video content tend to capture the most attention and engagement.
Invest time into creating original, eye-catching graphics, images, infographics, and videos to include with your social posts. Users tend to scroll past blocks of text so use visuals to draw them in.
Take advantage of tools like Adobe Express, so you have access to generative AI and professionally designed templates.
From here, you can create professional-looking Instagram reels, TikTok videos, and Facebook posts. Bold, eye-catching posts are more likely to draw viewers in and encourage them to share your content.
You can also leverage user-generated visual content by reposting customer photos.
Leverage Trending Topics and Hashtags
Stay on top of what topics are trending in the news or within your industry. Timely, thoughtful commentary on hot issues can help more users discover your social media profiles and engage with your content.
Also, strategically include relevant hashtags in your posts to reach those following certain topics or conversations. Just be careful not to overuse hashtags or incorporate ones that seem spammy.
Share Curated Content
While you want to share original content as much as possible, don’t shy away from curating and reposting articles, videos, infographics and more created by others that would interest your target audience.
Add your own commentary explaining why you are sharing the content and what value it provides for your followers.
Useful, informative curated content shows customers that you are plugged into what matters in your niche.
Be Conversational
Social media is all about fostering connections and community, so craft your posts in a conversational tone and style.
Ask followers questions to encourage engagement and reply to comments and messages. Show the actual people behind your brand by being informal, approachable, and friendly. Personable language and tone help you form relationships with customers.
Interact Frequently
To see the most social media success for your business, aim to post content and engage with users consistently. Set a goal for how many times per week you will post on each platform and stick to it.
Staying silent for too long can cause you to drop off follower feeds. Being frequently active pays dividends for expanding your reach and keeping your brand top of mind.
Offer Exclusive Value
Think about ways you can provide followers with exclusive content, discounts, or deals on social that they cannot access anywhere else.
For example, you can share special promotional codes, sales alerts, giveaways, or company insider perspectives just through your social channels.
Unique value drives more customers to not only follow but actively engage to avoid missing out.
Behind-the-Scenes Content
Give customers a peek behind the digital curtain of your brand by sharing images, videos, or posts of what goes on in your business behind the scenes.
Fun details like your office culture, employee takeovers, how products are made, customer testimonials, and local events humanize your company.
Followers feel more personally connected when you provide insider access.
Leverage Employees As Advocates
Get more employees actively sharing and engaging with your social media content to expand your reach. Their personal networks will help introduce your brand pages to new audiences.
Also featuring various employees on social helps humanise your brand and facilitate authentic connections.
Just be sure to give staffers clear guidelines regarding company values, messaging, engagement protocols, etc.
Monitor and Adapt
Pay close attention to which specific types of social media posts resonate most with your audience by monitoring engagement analytics.
See when followers are most active on each platform and tailor your timing accordingly.
Consistently tweak and perfect your social media approach based on performance data and evolving trends and algorithm changes on networks like Facebook and Instagram.
Creating engaging social media content that promotes your small business takes effort and strategy.
But it is well worth the investment given social media’s marketing power for customer acquisition, retention, loyalty, word-of-mouth, and sales.
