“What should I post on social media?”
It’s a question you ask a lot, but is it the right question?
Listen to any social media guru and you will hear words like “engaging” and “shareable.”
But if you knew what that meant exactly, you wouldn’t be here, right?
Instead of worrying about what makes a post engaging, find out what people want when they visit their social networks.
According to the Digital 2023 Global Overview Report, these are the primary reasons for using the various social media channels:
But note that social media algorithms are designed to show content that they think the individual user wants to see.
This means you need to really get to know YOUR audience and what is important to them.
One of the big things algorithms look at is how often a post is shared. Unfortunately a survey by Orbit Media Studios shows a big disconnect between why us marketers think people share content and why they actually do:
People want to help their friends and share practical information. Something to keep that in mind when creating your posts.
Also important to any social media strategy is understanding that people visit different social media platforms to achieve different things.
You can see that over 60% of Instagram users are there to follow or research brands. But only 37% use TikTok for that. So it would be smart to use Instagram to share your mission work, highlight testimonials and stories, and build your brand, but stick with more entertaining content for TikTok.
Users on LinkedIn and Twitter visit those networks to keep up with current events and news so that would be the best place for that type of content.
Finally, Facebook seems to be the most “all-purpose” social network meaning over half of users are there for each of these activities. (Note that the Facebook data includes Facebook Messenger which explains why messaging skews so heavily)
This doesn’t mean you have to create original content for each platform though. We are still big on repurposing here!
It just means you should frame your posts differently based on where you are sharing them to maximize their effectiveness.
If you want to know more about which social platforms you should be on and which ones you can dump, join us for a BRAND NEW webinar Keep It or Kick It: Picking the Right Social Platforms for Your Nonprofit Moving Forward
Need more help with choosing the right social media platform? Join our Free Membership to access our Private Community with dedicated spaces to social media, content creation, and more.
