Social Media: Everything You Need To Know To Build Your Brand
Best Times, Content, and Strategies for Facebook
We found that there are best times for posting on social media and they all vary. Though you should be posting consistently throughout the week with all types of content, we have crunched the numbers and found the absolute best times to have content ready and sent out to get the best audience engagement.
Best Times Facebook: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday are the best days for posting on Facebook. Depending on the audience that you are looking for, the best times throughout the day are 9am to 3pm (for instance: if you are targeting an audience in PST, aim to post between 2pm to 7pm EST. If you are looking to target the United States as a whole, run EST Time. Late night posting is a no-no in most cases.
However, pay attention to your insights on your Meta Business Suite. This can help you to identify when your audience is most engaged.
Best Content Types and How to Use Them (Facebook): Live Streams, Videos, Blogs, Articles, and Pictures. However, Livestreams and videos are the best for gaining engagement of your audience on Facebook. Audiences are 4X more likely to watch a Livestream and 5X more likely to engage on Live Streams. Videos, as you have noticed with these massive corporations creating entire platforms around this type of content are fundamental in gaining traction regardless of industry.
Word of advice, you need to be on your A-game with any content type. Moderation and management are key here.
To get an idea of what works, you need to objectively view all types of content on these platforms. Look at what they say, how they say it, what hashtags they use, and what pictures they use. How does it make you feel, how does it grab your attention, etc.
Use of Hashtags: Hashtags do work and should be used on video posts, shorts, etc. Target hashtags that are being used by influencers or that are gaining traction. 2-3 hashtags is plenty.
(Written in order of importance)
Videos – Need to be energetic and have a value exchange or be entertaining, humorous, or show something special/amazing. If you plan to use YouTube, then you should upload each video natively (Upload the same video on YouTube, then upload it on Facebook. Do NOT use links from YouTube to Facebook, vise versa. This will limit engagement due to competition. These companies hate each other and will limit your engagement.
Recommendations for Facebook Video
Supports all video files. However, mp4 is recommended
Resolution should be 1080p or less. 1080 is the standard
Supports up to 10GB files
Videos must be less than 240 minutes long
Recommend audio is Stereo AAC audio compression with 128kbps or more
Livestreams – The whole idea behind livestreams is to attract your audience and get them to engage. Since this is a relatively new feature, it destroys the algorithm and allows you to interact with your audience more organically. If you can get a large amount of engagement, you will be rewarded by Facebook. Facebook rewards large amounts of engagement by lowering the cost of engagement advertisements. This can save you tons of money in the long run. Promote the livestream with posts, videos, etc ahead of starting the livestream.
Bonus: You can save your live stream, this can then be converted to a video which can be used on Facebook, as well as, edited and posted on YouTube.
Photos – Facebook is polluted with Text posts, which we will get to in a second. To stand out, products, user-generated photos, and eye-catching photos from companies like stock images (contact limitless if you need these), are a great way to stand out from the crowd. The best photos to use are not the same as what works best on LinkedIn.
Photos should be high resolution, crisp, clear, and be attractive or informative.
Link Posts – Link posts are great for sharing outside/external links to a website, blog, etc. Link posts are a fantastic way to promote your own website content or spotlight other content you think your followers will enjoy or benefit from.
Facebook Stories – Similar to Snapchat and Instagram stories, Facebook Stories take the form of either photos or videos that expire 24 hours after being posted. They are becoming increasingly more popular. Stories work best in a 9:16 aspect ratio, so keep your content vertical when shooting. They are limited to 20 seconds.
Text Posts – Text posts (status updates) are a great way to gain engagement and get conversations going. The best way to use text posts is by using them in specific instances, such as: community interactions, comments, feedback on products, feedback on ideas, etc.
Best Times, Content, and Strategies for Instagram
Best Times Instagram: Tuesday and Friday are the best days to post on Instagram between 11am and 5pm. For B2B posts, the best times are 12pm to 1pm, 5 to 6pm, and 8 to 9pm. Because its commonly used to zone out or be entertained, we recommend using light and easy content for B2B during these times.
Use of Hashtags: Hashtags do work and should be used on video posts, shorts, etc. Target hashtags that are being used by influencers or that are gaining traction. All 30 hashtags should be used for videos, etc.
Videos – Need to be energetic and have a value exchange or be entertaining, humorous, or show something special/amazing. For 2022, dancing videos are proposed to be one of the largest categories.
Live Streams – Like Facebook, live streams are a great way to get engagement. They have a maximum time of 4 hours and need to be filmed in the vertical position on your phone.
Photos – To stand out, products, user-generated photos, and eye-catching photos from companies like stock images (contact limitless if you need these), are a great way to stand out from the crowd. The best photos to use are not the same as what works best on LinkedIn.
Photos should be high resolution, crisp, clear, and be attractive or informative and oriented in the vertical position.
Link Posts – Link posts are great for sharing outside/external links to a website, blog, etc. Link posts are a fantastic way to promote your own website content or spotlight other content you think your followers will enjoy or benefit from.
Instagram Stories – Similar to Snapchat stories, Instagram Stories take the form of either photos or videos that expire 24 hours after being posted. They are becoming increasingly more popular. Stories work best in a 9:16 aspect ratio, so keep your content vertical when shooting. They are limited to 20 seconds.
Best Times, Content, and Strategies for LinkedIn
Best Times: Tuesday through Thursday are the best days for posting on LinkedIn. The ideal time to post on LinkedIn is between 9am to 12pm. However, we recommend posting on LinkedIn regularly with insightful and valuable posts (2-5 times a week).
Best Content: The best content for LinkedIn is anything that can help the user in their career or has business value. Since LinkedIn users are inherently interested on progressing their careers, or learning more about their industry, the best way to post is by having informative articles, native videos (not linked from other sites), third-party content, photos/graphics, and text only posts.
Videos – Videos on LinkedIn need to have more value, share industry specific thoughts, and do so in a short amount of time.
Keep it short
Use subtitles (97% of videos are viewed while scrolling through)
Provide a CTA (Call to Action), for instance it could point to a long format video on YouTube
Add text content to introduce the video.
Photos –LinkedIn is polluted with posts. To stand out, products, user-generated photos, and eye-catching photos from companies like stock images (contact limitless if you need these), are a great way to stand out from the crowd.
Use meaningful imagery. It’s easy to just attach an image to a post as a “visual aid.” But imagery is a communication medium, not a prop. If you can help it, we highly recommend dropping stock imagery altogether.
Remember, imagery is also about branding. The graphics, blog-accompanying pictures, employee spotlights, event banners and other imagery you post on LinkedIn should always reflect your organization’s branding guidelines. Ideally, a LinkedIn user would recognize your imagery on his or her feed without having to see the name of who posted it.
Link/Blog Posts – Link posts are much the same as Facebook and Instagram, they are great for sending your audience to blogs, websites, articles, etc.
When distributing/promoting your company’s blog content on LinkedIn, make sure you include some sort of teaser text, or perhaps even a particularly compelling one- to two-paragraph excerpt, and not simply a hyperlink and feature image.
If you syndicate to LinkedIn, publish on your blog first. Unlike Medium and other syndication sites, LinkedIn doesn’t enable the inclusion of the “rel=canonical tag” that tells Google which piece is the original. You won’t negatively impact SEO if the post is originally published on your blog, and you link to that post in the reposted version.
Long form content (~2,000 words) performs better than shorter articles when posted through LinkedIn’s article-publishing platform.
The maximum length for a LinkedIn post (on the news feed) is 1,300 characters, which equates to 200-250 words. It’s always better to make a compelling point in fewer words if possible since most users are scanning through their feeds.
Text Posts – Like outlined for Facebook (status updates) LinkedIn is all about posts.
The maximum length for a LinkedIn post (on the news feed) is 1,300 characters, which equates to 200-250 words. It’s always better to make a compelling point in fewer words if possible since most users are scanning through their feeds
Use hashtags
Keep sentences short to convey meaning quickly
Wrap up
With these tips and tricks you should be well on your way to creating an awesome brand. If you still have questions, feel free to reach out to Limitless Marketing. If you need professional help, we are always here to help!
