Social Media Marketing

 

The Best Content for Major Social Media Platforms (+ Ideas and Examples)

Here is a summary of the best content for major social media platforms, along with some ideas and examples:

IFRAME SYNC

Facebook:

Personal updates, photos, and videos

Informative blog posts or articles

Behind-the-scenes looks at your business or brand

User-generated content (e.g., customer testimonials, user-submitted photos)

Facebook Live videos for Q&A sessions or announcements

Example: A home decor brand shares a video of their team decorating the office for the holidays, along with a link to a blog post with holiday decorating tips.

IFRAME SYNC

Instagram:

Visually appealing photos and videos

Product features or lifestyle shots

Instagram Stories highlighting your brand or daily activities

User-generated content (e.g., customer photos featuring your products)

Instagram Reels for short, engaging video content

Example: A fashion influencer posts a series of Instagram Stories showcasing their daily outfit and how they styled a new dress from a clothing brand.

Twitter:

Timely, newsworthy updates

Short, snappy text-based content

Engaging with your audience through replies and retweets

Sharing industry-related articles or news

Participating in relevant Twitter chats or discussions

Example: A software company tweets about a new feature release, along with a link to the product update blog post.

LinkedIn:

Thought leadership content (e.g., industry insights, tips, and advice)

Professional updates and achievements

Curated content relevant to your industry or network

Employee spotlights or behind-the-scenes looks at your company

Job postings and recruitment-related content

Example: A marketing agency shares a LinkedIn post detailing the key trends in social media marketing for the upcoming year, positioning the agency as an industry authority.

TikTok:

Short, entertaining, and engaging videos

Trending challenges or dance routines

Educational or informative content (e.g., tutorials, how-to videos)

User-generated content (e.g., customer testimonials, user-submitted videos)

Collaborations with influencers or other brands

Example: A cooking brand creates a series of TikTok videos demonstrating quick and easy recipe hacks, utilizing popular music and trends.

Remember, the best content for each platform should align with the specific audience, platform features, and content preferences on each social media network.

The best content to post on LinkedIn

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite personal brand-building platform, LinkedIn. The professional networking site has exploded with creators in recent years — many of them building a following off helping others build their personal brands on the platform. 

Perhaps the most common advice from personal brand aficionados is to explore video, photo, and document carousel posts — and they would be right.

According to Buffer data, the best content to post on LinkedIn is video by a hair’s breadth — photos and carousels aren’t far off. Our numbers show that video content has the highest engagement rate, with photos just 0.1 percent behind. 

Posts that contain only a link got the least engagement, which makes sense. More and more, we’re seeing platforms’ (and social media users’) preference for high-quality zero-click content. The platforms want to keep their users within their app or on their site, and users are less inclined to click on a link and consume their content elsewhere. 

Of the social media platforms we analyzed, LinkedIn is the social media channel where we saw the smallest difference between the various media types. For example, video posts only ranked 0.1 percent higher than photo posts, and photo posts were only 0.4 percent higher than PDF carousels. 

My takeaway from this graph — rather than that video should be the be-all and end-all of my LinkedIn social media strategy — is to maintain a good content mix on the platform.

LinkedIn content ideas

1. Chop up any video content you have

atOptions = {

e: 1.8rem; letter-spacing: 0.3px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 4vmin 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">When it comes to creating enough content to maintain consistency on the platform, repurposing is your best friend. If you’re hosting a webinar or speaking at professional events, be sure to get the recording — even a 30-minute session can yield several different one-minute clips for the platform. 

Aarushi Singh uses tools like VEED and Riverside to edit short snippets of her podcast to share on LinkedIn: