Knowing which medium can reach the maximum number of impressions on social media and generate the largest amount of audience engagement can help increase the impact of a social media marketing strategy. Depending on your industry, there will be a method of content that gets your desired results between text, images, or videos. Let’s dive in!
Understanding the impact and desired effects of the content you create plays a key role in knowing which kind of content to promote. This, combined with the platform, creates the recipe for content generation that your business should utilize. The decision between text and visual content is key.
Text
- Promotes a quicker site load speed
- Is able to reach a wider audience and be more easily understood
- Strengthens site SEO as Google can parse through text-based content to catalog sites
- Is a driving force to turn audience members into top-of-funnel leads
Tried-and-true, textual content has been a foundation of SEO for years. It is the cleanest method to convey information in a widely understandable way. However, while it is clear, it is not the most visually appealing way to present information.
Images
- More appealing, easier to understand, and tend to be viewed by more people
- Favored by younger generations
- More likely to be shared by consumers
In an ever-evolving, rapid-paced world, picture-based content is easier for consumers to digest and takes less time than reading a blog or text paragraph. Additionally, visual content draws eyes to it when presented on a page that is full of text. In short, it is more interesting and potentially more engaging than textual content.
Video
- Promotes higher levels of audience engagement
- Can lead to longer periods of audience engagement
- Can present more information in a relatively shorter period of time
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth millions. Video presents the largest opportunity for audience engagement and simultaneously comes with the highest impact as consumers are more likely to listen to a short snippet or clip than read a post. By utilizing transcripts, Google’s algorithms can also read and index the video to generate SEO power. Of course, we cannot talk about video without also including voice. To find out how voice search is impacting SEO, and Google at large, click here.
The question is not so much about picking textual or visual elements, but rather which combination of these elements will create the strongest social media campaign. An experienced Social Media Coordinator can be key in developing a strategy that employs the right amount of textual and visual elements to drive audience engagement.
How to Select the Best Content Method for Each Social Media Platform
When it comes to deciding which mixture of content is going to get your business the best results on social media, it all comes down to knowing what your audience is looking for. This is largely decided by what platform[Links back to top 5 overview blog]you are targeting.
Which Content Works Best on LinkedIn and Facebook?
For LinkedIn and Facebook, you should be expecting a similar mixture in terms of video-, text-, and image-based content. The true differences between content on the two platforms comes from the difference between the voices a business chooses to use on those sites.
Which Content Works Best on Instagram?
Instagram tailors largely towards images as the mainstay of the site. However, video has also become a large part of a consumers Instagram experience. With these two thoughts in mind, businesses seeking to utilize Instagram should focus on image and video as its main methods of content delivery.
Which Content Works Best on YouTube?
YouTube focuses almost entirely on video. Due to this, text- and image-based content have a lackluster effect. After all, YouTube is a video sharing site and a text post or image slideshow isn’t going to get the results a business wants.
Which Content Works Best on Twitter?
Twitter is largely text-based. As such, businesses should aim to utilize text to its fullest. However, images and gifs also have its place on the site as well as short (less than 30 second) videos.
Strong Content Resonates With Your Audience
Each of these platforms has what we might call a “preferred content method”. That is to say, each of these platforms has one specific method of content delivery that it is known for. This doesn’t bar other types of content from being used on those sites, but it is something that one needs to keep in mind.
Being in touch with what the user is expecting to get from their social media is key to driving engagement, leads, and conversions. By making sure your content is provided to your target audience in a timely, reliable, and consistent manner your business is ensuring a strong foothold in your desired customer’s social media experience.
Determining what kind of content to put out across each platform for your business can prove tricky, but the process is made much easier with the help of a social media coordinator. For help getting your business’s social media presence started on the right foot call us at (707) 843-3714 or fill out this form.
This blog is part of WSI’s Smart Marketing Guide to Social Media. [Click here] to view the complete guide.
