What Are Social Media Posts for Business?

What Are Social Posts?

The term “social media posts,” or “social posts,” simply refers to any form of publication that is distributed through a social media account. However, they differ from traditional print or online publications because they have a much shorter “shelf life.”

A Social Post’s Short “Shelf Life”

Think of them as Post-it Notes. We use Post-it Notes to jot down brief messages that are later tossed away. Similarly, social posts are intended to update audiences with a brief message related to your business that may or may not be relevant the following week (or even the next day). While it’s easy to delete a social post from an account, it’s rarely necessary as the message is quickly buried in user newsfeeds by trillions of competing social posts that are published every minute.

Social Posts Include Text, Photos, Videos, or Hyperlinks

Social posts come in all forms of media. For example, the most popular social media channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) allow you to create a post using text, a photo, a video, or a link to an alternative website that might feature an article, a registration form, or a promotion. This ability to share multimedia content makes social media a versatile and valuable tool for marketing.

Why Create Social Posts for Business?

When we encounter businesses that haven’t created a Business Page on any social media channels, their excuse usually goes like this: “I don’t see why we need it; no one in our industry uses Facebook for business.” We’ve learned that this really just means THAT PERSON doesn’t use Facebook for business. Sometimes it’s hard for us to think outside of our personal experiences, which is why assumptions like that should always be backed by analytics. The truth is, you’d be surprised at the number of qualified leads you can reach by using all the different social media channels.

But let’s get more specific. How exactly does reaching qualified prospects with social posts achieve business goals? Below are two main goals businesses can achieve through social posts:

1. Increase Brand Awareness

Social posts can increase your brand awareness. However, you have to commit to publishing a LOT of content – content that attracts your target audience. Update or educate your audience about your brand and industry through articles, videos, or images of your brand in action (services or products). Tell them about upcoming events and invite them to join you. Take advantage of the two-way conversation that social media provides. Ask your audience questions and respond to their comments.

As mentioned earlier, social posts serve a short shelf life. You have to commit to publishing content on a weekly basis because you need to remind your audience that your brand exists – in a way that makes them happy (not annoyed). We help our clients do this by establishing an “editorial calendar.”

An editorial calendar is just a fancy term used to describe the content development process from writing to publication. In order to publish social posts that generate leads, we plan out our client’s content a week (or a month) in advance. This ensures that there is enough time to:

• Write valuable content
• Capture or purchase high quality images
• Produce blogposts or web videos for sharing
• Tailor content for each social channel (e.g., Twitter has a very limited word count; Facebook has various language & text-on-image restrictions)
• Make revisions & obtain approvals from subject-matter experts
• Segment your target audience & set a budget to promote social posts
• Schedule which date/time to publish each social post.

While many businesses don’t have the capacity to follow this process without a marketing department or agency, you will see how it’s incredibly worthwhile when you start to notice your social posts generating massive interest in your brand.

2. Drive Website Traffic

Social posts also drive web traffic (well, they will once you start including backlinks to your website). It’s truly amazing how web traffic can double or even quadruple for businesses that aren’t currently creating social media posts. But how does it happen?

Once social posts reach your targeted audience with content made “just for them,” they’re more likely to click on that content. That’s why it’s important to create social posts that include calls-to-action with backlinks to your website. If the prospect follows the link to the website and remains on the landing page for a certain amount of time, or if they continue to navigate throughout the site, Google will start to rank that webpage for keywords that brought that visitor to your website. In other words, social posts with backlinks help increase SEO and can nurture prospects into leads.

Bottom Line: Social Media Posts Generate Leads

In case we lost you somewhere in the thicket, we’ll close with the bottom line. The reason any business should increase brand awareness, drive traffic to their website, or use social media is to generate leads. Just like websites, TV, and radio, social media posts help to accomplish just that. They’re just another tap on the shoulder to funnel your prospects into a decision about your brand. We love monitoring analytics on this powerful medium, and believe you will too. To learn more about creating social media posts for your business, contact us!