What Makes A Good Social Media Post

Post content regularly and be responsive to messages from your page

• You’re seeking to promote your brand so you need to keep it out in front of users as a reminder of your presence. A business that has a page and leaves it idle risks painting the picture of being inactive.
• The optimal frequency of publishing depends on your business type and size, your audience and the social media platform you’re using. The approximate rule of thumb is post three times a week if you can.
• However don’t post with mundane material just for the sake of posting and don’t oversaturate your audience and run the risk of being unfollowed. Always lean towards quality over quantity.

Post at peak times

• Do your own research for your local area. If you understand your audience, you can post at times when they’re likely to access the particular social media platform you’re using. For example, it could be beneficial to publish during a lunch break if your audience is taking a well-earned rest and looking for some interesting material on social media. As a general rule, the peak for Facebook traffic on week days occurs during the early afternoon between the hours of 1 and 3 pm.
• Generally speaking, posting on a public holiday isn’t a good idea if your audience is going to be offline celebrating with friends and family. For example, if you wish to post a Christmas message, it may be more effective to publish it on Christmas Eve morning/afternoon.

Understand who your target audience is

• If you know who your intended audience is you can write material that’s relevant and interesting them. Even if you’re not creating a public post remember that material can be shared by your connections. Write accordingly as if it was in the public domain.

Be concise and clear

• Social media platforms aren’t the place for long content. Have a strategy in mind and determine the required outcome from your post before publishing. This will help you to get to the point of your desired message quickly.
• Choose content length according to the type of platform you’re posting on, eg for Facebook we suggest using up to three brief paragraphs, and always try to end with a Call-to-Action such as an invitation to call your business or by providing a URL (link) to access further details on your website.
• Without a doubt, the English language contains many nuances. Some words can have multiple meanings and the use of these words may greatly affect how we understand written content, especially when a reader is relatively new to the language and has difficulty determining the correct context. Where possible, it's desirable to use terminology that's unambiguous and choose words that only have a singular meaning.

Engage audiences with your media

• If you’re posting to Facebook, try to avoid posting text only. Users will tend to scroll straight past text-only posts and on to the next one! You can captivate audiences by posting videos, slides etc. Action videos with audio demonstrate a vibrancy about your business!
• Your images should be inviting and not overcomplicated. Use high resolution images that are sized accordingly for the social media you are posting to. Don’t use stock images, be original and beware and also respectful of any copyright restrictions for images published on the internet.
• If you include text overlays in your image try to limit the text to approximately twenty percent of the image size. Text is prone to distortion and pixelation when a device resizes the image. Therefore, text overlays should always be bold and using a simple font so they remain legible. Choose your colours carefully and make sure there's sufficient visual contrast between the text and the image background so that the text is readable. Text shadows can help to enhance contrast.
• If you don’t have an image for use and if your website has been built with social media integration using Open Graphics tags, a graphic can be automatically added to your post with a link back to your website. Ask us how!

Be interactive

• Ask your audience to share your posts so as to extend the distribution of your brand and consider sponsored posts if your material is relevant to a wider audience. Encourage user comments and always promptly acknowledge/respond to comments. To a new audience, comments on your posts demonstrate engagement. Likes can also help to promote your business – they can be used by an audience to determine if a business is posting material that is legitimate.

Be a good representative for your business

• Don’t use the term “I” or “me” if you’re representing a business or other organisation, use “we” or “us” instead.
• Attend to spelling and grammatical errors. It looks unprofessional otherwise. If you’re not sure, there are plenty of resources on the internet to check spelling or use a word processor with spell check to draft your material before posting. And remember that you can edit your post retrospectively if necessary.
• Unfortunately, plagiarism tends to flourish on social media. You should always post original material so your posts remain relevant to your business activities, that puts your business in the best light possible. Please don’t plagiarise, after all, that can be a form of copyright infringement.
• Avoid overstating. You want to ensure your audience gets a feel that your enterprise is genuine as well as being fair and reasonable. The latter point includes not being critical or derogatory in any way, eg downgrading competitors unfairly. However you’ll still need to reflect that you are a successful and progressive business, even when business is a little bit slow at any given time (those ups and downs are a natural characteristic for a lot of businesses).
• Be factual, don’t write about events that are in the ideas or even planning stage. It doesn’t reflect well on your business or organisation if you have to retract an earlier post because you thought something was a good idea at the time but didn’t have any real justification for that concept. It makes you look a little disorganised and unprofessional.