5 Types Of Social Media Posts You Need For Your Business

Growing impact, engagement, and conversion with strategic content

The question “What shall I post today?” might be one of the biggest obstacles that make content creation so stressful.

But there’s another obstacle that shows itself once you have decided on your topic.

And that’s not about WHAT to write but HOW to write. Well, we all know how writing works (doh!) but what I want, is to take you to a more strategic level once more.

Looking at the “how to write” from the perspective of what kind of post to create to give your audience a variety of content that’s always interesting AND allows you to be more strategic about how you share content.

The result?

Being visible, valued, and trusted, so that you can sell with more ease and even joy!

In this article, I’ll introduce you to my five favourite social media post types that help you to…

• Establish you as an expert
• Be relatable and human
• Promote and sell without feeling too salesy
• Increase the engagement on your posts
• Connect with your audience on a deeper level

Type #1 – Educating & inspiring your audience

This article is a typical “educate & inspire” post. It’s a “how-to” post that contains knowledge that you can implement straight away.

This kind of content is also called “authority content” because it shares a portion of your knowledge that helps your audience in their transformational journey. Your knowledge makes you more credible as an expert and service provider and it inspires others to achieve more through the knowledge that you are sharing.

And when you make your educational content actionable, then your audience gets a taste of what it’s like to work with you. You are giving your audience what they need to succeed, share value through implementable knowledge, and inspire them to look into your offer(s) and the benefits and long-term outcomes that they can achieve by working with you.

Typical posts of this category share knowledge about how to do something in multiple steps, frameworks that make you a better provider and expert, and enable, inspire, and empower your audience with actionable knowledge.

Type #2 – Storytelling posts that connect on a deeper level

Storytelling is one of the most powerful marketing tools that is available to you. You don’t need any subscriptions or fancy apps. You only need a story, a point you want to make, and the time to write it up.

Human brains are wired for stories and they allow you to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Stories create a direct connection to your audience’s minds and allow them to retain information much better.

Depending on the stories you tell, you can plant the idea and images of what’s possible for clients who are working with you.

Authentic stories create a sense of belonging because often you make yourself vulnerable and share your struggles and problems, but also your goals and how you managed to achieve them.

Stories compel people to work with you because they can find themselves in your story. You are on the same level and you show your audience how they can re-write their narrative – because it’s already been done by the heroes of your story.

Storytelling posts are truly magic in their capacity to create a bond and inspire people!

Type #3 – Sharing details about your personal life and your business

Before you recoil and put up a wall, please understand that there’s a big difference between personal and private.

This type of content is not meant for you to share private details that make you uncomfortable and might haunt you in the future. This is about sharing personal information that makes you more relatable and human.

Information that helps your audience to align with you. With your values and beliefs – because people trust people who share the same values and beliefs.

These posts are opening the doors to your business and show your audience how your business works, what your business culture is, what kind of beliefs you hold dear, what you do and would never do…

In this type of content, you show your audience who you are professionally and give them a reason to trust in your capabilities to deliver on your promise.

How you show up matters, and your audience wants to know who you are as a business person and how you behave in your community.

There’s nothing scary about sharing this kind of personal information. On the contrary, it only builds trust and a deeper emotional connection.

Type #4 – Human-to-human networking and engagement

One way of getting more engagement with your content is to make it easy for your audience to engage and to make it obvious that you want them to engage.

That could be through polls or posts that have a very clear and compelling call to action. (E.g. a CTA that asks people to share their experiences and opinions on a topic that is relevant to them and that they are already engaging in.

When you encourage your audience to engage with you, they are more likely to do just that. Even more so, if you create your own community where people can interact with your brand and get a little taste of what it is like working with you.

All of these content types contribute to you, consistently creating a community that is interested in your area of expertise and you as a person who cares about the members of your community.

When you give people the opportunity to engage with your brand, it makes your brand more personal and shows them that you really see the people in your community, and understand and care about them.

However, shallow posts that ask for an emoji or share a picture of their footwear or dinner, are forgotten within a minute. Posts that let your audience engage in a meaningful way and make them feel and think, linger on the minds of your audience for longer.

Type #5 – Promoting and selling your services

As a rough guideline…

70-80% of your posts should be type #1-4 posts

• 20-30% of your posts should be promotion and sales posts

I understand that you don’t want to be the sleazy, pushy person who blatantly pushes their services into people's faces.

But think about it…

With a promotion and sales post, you are merely making a point that you are open to business and that you have the right services to help your clients achieve the goals and the transformation they are after.

If you don’t do it, someone else will (and this someone else might not be able to serve them as well as you can).

Promoting and highlighting your offers is fine. How you do it, makes a difference though.

When you promote your offers, you should make sure that your audience is absolutely clear on the benefits and long-term outcomes as well as how they can achieve the results.

In a good offer post, you are sharing the benefits (80%) based on the features (20%) that you offer.

Yes, you can list the features but you need to pay a lot more attention to the results and benefits that your clients get out of any of the features that you share.

By highlighting the outcomes, you are reminding your audience of the necessity and urgency to work with you. You are painting a clear picture of the outcomes and what their life could be like after working with you. You are reminding them of the results they can expect and you explain how they can achieve them.

It is ok to promote and sell – in fact, it’s necessary. But it is important to get the balance right between educating, building relationships, nurturing, and promoting/selling.

During a sales campaign, the balance tips towards more sales posts but in between, share a bit more value through your content.

What to do next

Writing a variety of different posts doesn’t only increase your impact, it’s also more interesting for you and your audience. And it also makes you feel ok with promoting your business because you know that most of your content provides your audience with value and information that enables and empowers them – or simply makes their day a bit better.

Give it a try and include these types of content in your next month’s content calendar. You might find that the energy that you are writing with will be more positive too. Novelty and variation make things a lot more exciting.

Just like a varied training plan makes exercising easier and more effective.

And if you want to know more about how exactly you can write any of these content types, then either send me a message or check out the Word Distillery by clicking on the image: