With competition continuing to intensify on social media, and platforms constantly tweaking their algorithms to reward high quality content, brands, businesses, and influencers have no choice but to go all out when it comes to crafting engaging social media posts.
Whether it is to retain and engage your existing audience, or to go viral and grow your followers by leaps and bounds, you need an effective social media playbook that guides your strategies and activities to yield the best results.
In this article, we cover a slew of tried and tested tips that have worked wonders on social media for all goals and intents.
1. Use High-Quality Images & Videos
We live in the age of content, where everyone and their grandmother’s are creators, and in order to stand out in such a landscape, you have to go above and beyond what everyone else is offering.
If everyone is sharing images and videos on their social media profiles, you can share high-quality, professionally crafted images and videos that stand out.
While scrolling through a vast array of images and graphics, a professional stock photograph that is well-lit, and perfectly composed will force users to stop and take a look. Once you have their attention, you can then convey the message, or your call-to-action.
2. Use Eye-Catching Headlines
Once you have your scroll-stopping image, video, or graphic, the next step is to drive viewer attention through a similarly eye-catching series of headlines.
Not only should the headlines retain attention, but also instill trust, and promote the broader message of your brand or business, which are just as essential for driving call-to-actions.
There are certain types of headlines that are known to work perfectly for certain social media platforms. A sharp, crisp header works wonders on Twitter, a brief headline, with an elaborate text works similarly well on Facebook, and likewise for other new and old platforms.
3. Incorporate Interactive Elements
Social media algorithms are heavily skewed in favor of posts and content that drive the most engagement, and the best way to do so is with interactive elements such as quizzes, and other types of calls-to-action.
On Twitter, a number of power users offer freebies sent directly as DMs, in return for likes, follows, and retweets, which kick-starts a chain reaction, often resulting in 10s of thousands of views within a short span of time.
There are similar strategies for other platforms, but whatever you choose, make sure to keep an eye on content and moderation policies of the platforms in question. There are some that absolutely hate commercial or spammy content.
4. Use User Generated Content
There are few better ways of generating engagement with your followers or subscribers than by sharing content created by other members of your community. This not only fosters community involvement, but results in more users sending their creations to you, substantially lowering the time and money required for content development.
This can be taken up a notch by running contests, with prizes for the top submissions, all of which are a great way to signal engagement to social media algorithms, all the while building brand awareness and trust among your audiences.
5. Use Custom Fonts
Another stellar way of having your posts stand out is with the help of font variations. The idea here is to go against the flow, that is, if a particular platform is dominated by content with a particular style of font, trying a different one will likely attract more eyeballs.
While they may not all be the same exact font, they usually follow a particular style, for example, Times New Roman and Calibri dominate both Twitter and Facebook. A wacky, fun or casual take on the font, for an audience that is used to professional styles will definitely stand out, or at least force people to stop scrolling.
There is no shortage of new, innovative fonts, and there are even tools that allow designers to create custom fonts that perfectly align with their marketing collateral. Eitherway, it makes great sense to try different variations to see what works best.
Conclusion
We can write entire books on ways to get your social media posts to stand out, but most of the broader strategies can broadly be condensed into what we’ve discussed above. With a bit of trial, testing, and optimizing, this approach will work wonders in the long run.