The content monster is always hungry, and it’s not very grateful either! As marketers, brands, and content creators, we spend a lot of time and effort creating content for social media, but not all of it does well and if we’re being honest, we’re not always getting what we want out of it.
I get asked every single day for tactics on how to create content and maximize efforts on social media.
I personally create a lot of content and advise a lot of restaurants and hospitality tech companies on their marketing, so I do have a lot of experience with this. However, I don’t have all the answers… But I was recently gifted some very important ones!
I was invited to join a call with an Instagram growth advisor from Meta. On that call, they shared a number of top tactics and best practices for greeting content. I’ve tested some of these out myself, and I can confirm for you they are working.
While I can’t share everything we discovered on the call, here are some of the top guidelines you should be following right now in creating content:
1. BEST TIME TO POST
30 to 60 minutes before your peak time
This helps you to catch the wave of when your followers are most active. Tap your professional dashboard, then new followers, scroll down, and you’ll see it there.
2. REELS + CAROUSELS
On a seven days a week content plan, you would want to do five reels and two carousels.
If you’re posting every other day, go carousel, then reel, then carousel, then reel, etc
Any video is automatically considered a reel. Reels are great to help you gain exposure to people who do not follow you.
A carousel is a series of photos or videos posted together, giving people the ability to swipe through them. Carousels and static image posts will be shown to more of your followers.
If, like me, you’ve only been doing reels, it means you are not optimizing engagement with your followers. This is a lesson I learned!
Why a carousel versus a static image?
If somebody is following you and they engage with your carousel post but do not swipe through all of the photos, the next time they log into the app, Instagram will show them the content again, starting with a different image in the carousel. That means you get a second shot with your content!
3. TRENDING AUDIO
For those carousel posts, in particular, tending audio will boost your content for higher engagement.
4. QUALITY OVER EVERYTHING ELSE
The number one reason one piece of content does better over another is the quality of the content.
It doesn’t matter what hashtags you use, what time of day you post, if it’s a collaboration, video, or you have trending audio … content that is entertaining, engaging, informational, etc, will outperform.
All of the other tactics do manner, but if the content sucks. You’re only making it suck a little less.
Pro-tip this is coming straight from the mouth of the engagement specialist - try to be funny, silly, entertaining, or perhaps jump on a meme once a week. People are on social media to be entertained. If you can do something that’s entertaining, you will be rewarded with engagement.
5. ACCEPT COLLABORATIONS IMMEDIATELY
Accept a collaboration from another account within the first 30 minutes of the content being published or as close to real-time as possible.
The most important time for every single piece of content is right after it has been posted live. That’s when the algorithm is trying to decide what to do with it and seeing what the initial reactions are. If both Accounts collaborating on the post are pushing at the same time, that gives you the biggest chance of exposure.
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Are you doing any of these? What have you found to work or not work? What else is working for you?
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Do you need help with any of this? Send me an email rev@brandedstrategic.net
- Rev Ciancio
WHAT DOES REV DO?
*I help restaurants to build guest marketing programs.
*I help hospitality tech companies with lead generation and content marketing.