Optimizing Social Media Content: Which Platforms Are the Best to Optimize and How?

There’s no denying that social media can be a powerful tool for your brand.

Showing up consistently with helpful and unique content for social platforms helps you generate awareness for your brand. It also attracts leads and sales. But this can be tricky as you navigate social media algorithms to get your content noticed.

That’s where optimizing social media content comes into play. By being strategic with the kind of content you’re creating, you stand a better chance of boosting visibility and engagement.

If you’re concerned about catching up on social media optimization, have no fear. We’re covering all of the basics of optimizing content. You’ll learn what it means and how to optimize based on each separate platform. Let’s dive in!

Optimizing Social Media Content: What Does This Mean?

Since social media generates awareness for your brand through exposure to a wider audience, optimization lets you capitalize on that. You use various social platforms to spread your brand’s message and establish your online presence.

You spend time analyzing and auditing your strategy, factoring in social media best practices, and what’s performing well with your audience. Meaning you develop the most effective strategy possible.

But what does it mean when you’re optimizing social media content? It comes down to being strategic about the content you publish. When using social media as a brand, you don’t want to post just anything.

Your content should still center the interests of your target audience. In addition to considering what your audience is into, you will also want to align your content with what performs best for each separate platform to get better results.

Doing social media optimization properly can help you reap a ton of rewards. The benefits speak for themselves about the value of optimizing your content:

• You’ll Develop an Effective Social Media Strategy: When you know how to create strong content for each social media platform, you can effortlessly craft a strategy that will help you be more consistent with posting. You’ll always know what kind of content to share, where to share, and when. It takes all the guesswork out of managing your social media presence.
• Your Engagement Will Increase: When your content is optimized properly, there’s a good chance it’ll see a greater reach, therefore, increasing your visibility. This means your brand could get discovered by tons of new people. And you boost engagement (such as comments, shares, and website traffic) to attract new followers.
• You’ll See a Greater ROI Across Platforms: Odds are, you use social media as a tool to help you achieve some of your larger business goals. Generating sales is a common one, for instance. Another is increasing brand visibility. With successfully optimized content, you increase your chances of reaching those goals and boost your ROI. Plus, seeing those analytics is a great way to see your hard work pay off.

At the end of the day, the social media accounts that end up being successful are those that understand trends, the types of people on the platform, and how to take advantage of their existing content library to optimize it across accounts. They become masters at their platforms and create content their audience can’t get enough of. As a result, they’ve built engaged, loyal followings.

Which Social Media Platforms Are Best to Optimize?

It’s easier than ever to find a social media platform that’s an ideal fit for your brand because there many are available. You want to ensure you invest time and energy into the platforms that showcase your strengths while putting you in front of your target audience. Otherwise, you risk your content going unnoticed or getting seen by the wrong people.

Source: Gainchanger

If you’re going to be creating content for several platforms, you want to make sure you enhance that content for the different goals of that platform so it stands a better chance of performing well. Once you become a master at social media best practices, this will become second nature to you.

To get started, you should make sure that you have defined your business goals for social media. This means choosing strategies that align with those goals. For example, if you want to improve SEO for a B2B business, you might choose LinkedIn because over 50% of companies in the B2B arena find clients on the platform.

Alternatively, if you want to increase visibility for your brand, you might go with Facebook. Their ad features make it easy to target the right segments while making sure people still see your content and posts.

What are the Best Tactics for Social Media Optimization?

Broadly, there are a ton of things you can do to optimize your social channels. By using some of these simple strategies, you can make a big dent in getting your business out there and noticed by the right people.

But what are the best ways to optimize your social media? We’ve chosen a few general fixes and high-level improvements you can make to help your business’s pages.

Never Stop Thinking About Your Audience

Your audience is the most important part of your social media presence. They drive your engagement. This means their interests and pain points should always be top of mind.

And the demographics for your audience could be different across your different social channels. That’s why you should regularly take the time to check out the types of followers you have in your analytics.

Write Snappy Bios

Your bio is one of the earliest things someone will see when they check out your profile. It sets the tone and establishes who you are. So, make sure your bio covers what you do, your industry, and nails your brand tone quickly.

Having a great bio can encourage a potential client to reach out to you, so you want to ensure you make a good impression while being aware of their attention span.

Consider the Time You Post

Tons of hours have gone into studying the best times to post on social media over the years. While it’s not an exact science, you can make educated guesses based on when most of your audience is online.

If you’re just starting, you might choose a time to post social media based on the research others have done. Or try out a few times and see which gets the most engagement over a couple of weeks. From there, you’d post at the time that received the most regular interaction.

Avoid Posting Too Much

There’s also not a magic number of times that you should post in a week, but you don’t want to under-post to the point where people don’t see anything you have to say. It’s also important not to overwhelm your audience because they could get annoyed with your content and unfollow you.

That’s why you should find a sweet spot and stick to that whenever you write and post content for social. For example, best practices note that you should post on Instagram between 3 and 7 times a week, but you’re encouraged to post more than once a day on Twitter. That’s due, in part, to the lifespan of posts on these different platforms. A tweet is only relevant for 18 minutes, but on Instagram, you can get a lifecycle of a couple of days.

Make Your Content Searchable

If no one can find your content, they can’t engage with it. They also won’t know that your brand is what they need to solve a problem they have. While you won’t need to use this tactic all the time (sometimes you might just be talking to your existing customers), it’s a good thing to keep in mind.

One way to do this is through hashtags so that searchers can find your posts based on a couple of relevant words that trend on a platform. If you have an SEO team, you can also get keyword research from them to help boost organic performance.

Create Engaging Visuals

You cannot ignore the importance of visuals in social media content. You’re more likely to attract an audience if your content is visually engaging. In fact, you’re 65% more likely to retain information if a visual is attached to it. If you’re trying to up your visual game, here are a few tips:

• Avoid images that are too dark. More light usually means more likes and shares.
• Multiple colors get more attention in posts than images with only one color.
• Your header text should be larger than the body text on a graphic.
• Be aware of the color wheel.
• Add images to your quotes. This could be anything from inspirational quotes or memes.

When you put thought into your images, your audience will appreciate the hard work you’ve put in and be delighted by the images and graphics you create.

How to Optimize Your Social Media Posts

Knowing and understanding your audience is essential for all content. You don’t want to overlook it with social media posts. You should create content that interests your audience so your posts will resonate with them. Consider what they’re interested in seeing from you and how you can provide solutions to their biggest pain points.

From there, you can tweak your content according to what performs best on each platform. To help you get started, we’re breaking down what works best on four top social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn). Here’s what you need to know:

1. Optimizing Your Facebook Posts

Facebook can be a great place to build an audience, but many brands find the platform frustrating because of low impressions and engagement. And considering the organic reach of a Facebook Page post is only 5.2%, the frustration makes sense. But you can do a few things to improve your posts and boost engagement rates:

• Copy: A regular Facebook post can be up to 63,206 characters in length, which means it’s a great platform for posting long-form content. But should you? According to BuzzSumo research, shorter Facebook posts perform better, specifically those under 50 characters. Additionally, longer posts get cut off by Facebook’s “see more” option, so it’s important to stay snappy and avoid that.
• Hashtags: With the ability to write longer posts, it can be tempting to add tons of hashtags to generate more reach. However, it’s best to stick to just two or three relevant hashtags.
• Visuals: Facebook recommends uploading images that are 1,200 x 630 pixels in size, so consider that when creating graphics. It doesn’t matter if you post in landscape, portrait, or square, Facebook will automatically resize it to 500 pixels wide. The height will be scaled accordingly for the best quality.

2. Optimizing Your Instagram Posts

When viewing the standard Instagram feed, a user sees posts from the accounts they engage with the most first. So, if you want your content to be at the top of someone’s feed, you’ll want to encourage them to engage with you as much as possible. You can also suggest they add your account as one of their favorites to secure you a top spot. Other than that, here are some more tips:

• Copy: Your Instagram captions can be up to 2,200 characters in length, giving you plenty of room to write captivating content for your followers to consume. However, research that analyzed 5.9 million Instagram posts shows posts between 1-50 characters appear to drive more interactions. Short and sweet is the way to go on this platform.
• Hashtags: When writing your Instagram caption, you can include up to 30 hashtags. If you try to add more than that, you can’t post the caption. But avoid cramming in as many as possible. Studies show that 11 is the magic number for Instagram hashtags. It also doesn’t matter if you place the hashtags in the caption or a separate comment.
• Visuals: When posting to your Instagram feed, you have three options. You can share a square image (1,080 x 1,080 pixels), a horizontal image (1,080 x 566 pixels), or a vertical image (1,080 x 1,350 pixels). Sticking to these specifications will ensure your image doesn’t get pixelated.

3. Optimizing Your Twitter Posts

Twitter has become the go-to platform for those seeking real-time updates. You can always count on its users to be discussing breaking news stories or live tweeting events (such as conferences or TV shows). But Twitter is also a great place to share educational tips with your community. To ensure your tweets get plenty of engagement, keep these tips in mind:

• Copy: There was a lot of excitement when Twitter increased its character limit from 140 to 280 characters in 2017. And it’s safe to say users appreciate having a little more room for sharing their thoughts. Now the ideal tweet length is between 240 and 259 characters.
• Hashtags: Although you can use as many hashtags as you’d like on Twitter, the platform recommends using no more than two per tweet. In fact, tweets that have one or two hashtags reportedly see 21% higher engagement than those with three or more hashtags.
• Visuals: Adding an image to your tweets is a fantastic way to stand out and grab attention in a busy feed. Just make sure you’re uploading horizontal images that are 1,200 x 675 pixels for best results.

4. Optimizing Your Pinterest Posts

There’s no denying that Pinterest is one powerful visual search engine. Users across the globe turn to Pinterest to look for recipes, DIYs, and fashion inspiration. It can also be a great place to search for business and marketing tips. Odds are, Pinterest has something to offer no matter what type of content you’re on the hunt for. And here’s how to ensure your content stands out:

• Copy: Your pin description on Pinterest can be up to 500 characters in length. However, it’s worth noting that only the first 30-60 characters appear in the feed without clicking on the post. For that reason, you want to make sure that the first snippet is the most attention-grabbing.
• Hashtags: You can include more than 20 hashtags per pin, although this can look spammy to users and be a turn-off. Instead, stick to between two to eight hashtags for the best results. Simply choose the most relevant, and you’re on your way to optimized content.
• Visuals: Long, vertical images are what truly thrive on Pinterest. That’s why you want to stick with their ideal image size of 1,000 x 1,500 pixels with an aspect ratio of 2:3. Any other than that and Pinterest says your pin’s performance could be negatively impacted. If your brand creates infographics, you’ll want to make sure you post them to Pinterest!

5. Optimizing Your LinkedIn Posts

LinkedIn has become the preeminent platform for professionals. Companies looking to hire new employees can post job listings, while eager job hunters can apply for their dream positions. And brands can use this social platform to share their latest content, promote offerings, and generate new leads. You just need to know how to use it effectively. Here’s how you can start optimizing social media content on LinkedIn:

• Copy: When crafting your LinkedIn post, you’ll have a maximum of 700 characters available to use. But it’s important to note that, at the 140-character mark, you’ll get a “see more” cut off. For that reason, research suggests keeping your posts on the shorter side. The recommendation is 25 words or less, so you’ll want to make your point quickly. Though it’s worth mentioning that some of the most viral posts are those that personalized stories.
• Hashtags: Although there isn’t a limit to how many hashtags you can add to a LinkedIn post, the platform recommends using only three hashtags per post. This is preferable to avoid looking spammy or cluttered when your followers are reading them.
• Visuals: When adding images to your LinkedIn posts, horizontal is best. Create images at 1,104 x 736 pixels to ensure everything you upload looks high-quality, never pixelated.

Optimize Your Social Media Platforms with Expert Help

The team of social media experts at Express Writers has years of experience crafting incredible social media content. These writers understand how to pull in SEO while optimizing for each platform. If you need social media posts, there’s no need to look at other content writing agencies. Our passionate social media writers are here to help.

Contact us today to learn more about our services.