Types of Social Media Content

Contrary to what you might have come to believe, in view of the profile limitations on social media content, there’s actually quite a bit of variety to choose from. Of course, the basic criteria of crispness, visual appeal, emotional connect, storytelling approach, news peg or humor, need to be there. But at the micro level, you’ll come across different and distinctive kinds of content for social media. Let’s take a look at some of the major varieties of social media content.

Infographics

Graphics have for long been used to communicate crisply and succinctly, communicating a lot of information in a compact format so that the essence of the information can be grasped virtually at a glance. The new-age graphics culture has been redefined as infographics – a combination of information and visual graphics. There seems to be a general consensus that infographics get shared faster than other forms of social media content.

So if your audience is presented with a choice between a presentation and an infographic, the chances of them going for an infographic are much higher. Infographics are engaging and are more easily processed by the human mind, and their visual appeal draws the audience into reading the content.

Evocative & emotional content

No, we’re not talking of provocative content that’s more inclined to evoke a negative emotion, but about evocative content that triggers a positive emotion in your audience. The idea is to connect with your audience’s emotions, since those eventually inspire them to share your content.

Content that causes positive emotions to be whipped enable the building of trust and confidence in the audience, which in turn leads them to spread the content around in their circles. After all, emotion is a universal language, which the world understands and relates to.

Image-led content

This requires little explanation, since we’re already agreed on the importance of making social media content visually appealing and engaging. A picture says a thousand words, as the old saying goes. This holds a thousand times truer for social media content, where one image can strike a deep chord with the audience when even a thousand words can’t.

And people simply love to share good images – perhaps there’s a psychological reason behind it, maybe they feel it shows their good aesthetic taste. Whatever the reason, the fact is that content with images is more likely to get a good response than plain text.

Interactive content

The moment you come across content that’s interactive, be it in the form of images, videos, animation, or games etc, you tend to engage with it quickly and spontaneously. It’s all about creating an experience for your audience, which you could do in a zillion different ways, perhaps through quizzes that stimulate their minds or games that make them want to play

News-led content

The moment your post reveals something new, you can rest assured it’s going to click with your audiences. People want to know, they love to gain knowledge. So you’ll find all those news articles becoming an instant hit, as do those `how-to’ posts. And if that knowledge is laced with humor, the chances of it going viral go up manifold.

So look for a news element, something which your audiences are unlikely to be aware of, and perhaps something that you can present to them in a humorous manner, unless of course it’s a tragedy you’re sharing with them.

Conclusion

A good mix and match of content, drawing from these varieties, could go a long way in helping your promote your social media content. However, you’re likely to need to customize the profile of your social media content, depending on your audience’s taste and needs, as well as your own requirements. There may be times when, despite your best efforts to go visual, you find yourself saddled with a whole lot of textual information that needs to be shared.

In such a case, instead of going image-led or infographic, you may find opting for a news peg or story-led format more useful. Whatever the format, just remember to keep it simple and appealing, with some visual effects to make it engaging for your audience. Knowing the benefits of good social media content can really help you boost your business, as the website Social Media Business Blueprint will show you.