What to Post on Social Media & When to Post It

Knowing what type of content to post on social media is paramount to engaging your target audience and growing your brand. Knowing when to post it is equally important. In the case of social media, you can manage these priorities by organizing your content calendar in advance.

How does my audience use social media?

When you think about how to grow a social media presence, the first thing to consider is what kind of content best engages your audience. For example, do they prefer deep-dives or bite-sized content?

As a small business, putting your time, effort, and social media budget into the right kinds of content is vital if you want to see a return on investment (ROI). Fortunately, finding out what your audience prefers isn’t complicated—it just means committing a little time to carry out a social media performance analysis. There are tools to help with that. 

With Squarespace Analytics, for instance, you can see the social media channels your audience uses most to click through to your website. You can also pinpoint the specific posts that are driving click-throughs, and analyze what makes those posts successful.

Your analysis should explore factors such as:

• Did the post include video or photography?

• What was the tone of voice used in the post?

• How many words did the post have in it?

• Did you use hashtags?

• Did the post link to a blog or a podcast or downloadable material, such as a whitepaper?

• Was the post promoting a competition/giveaway, a how-to guide, a product to purchase, or something else? 

In addition to using a website analytics tool, you can also gauge audience sentiment via the actual social media. Some social media, like Twitter and Facebook, offer their own analytics tools that enable you to get a snapshot of your on-page performance that shows which posts are working better than others.

For a more holistic view of audience engagement, start a spreadsheet for each social platform that gives a link to the post in the columns and, in the rows, records the following data:

• Reactions (e.g., likes)

• Shares

• Comments

• Clicks to your profile

This will enable you to compare and contrast social media performance between channels. Finally, track your daily follows/unfollows in line with the content you post to get a better understanding of the types of content people do and don’t enjoy. 

When to post your content

Newsfeed algorithms (Facebook and Instagram in particular) rank content in no small part according to how recent it is. So if you want your content to be seen by your target audience, it’s best to post it when they’re most likely to be online.

 Most social media experts agree with Hootsuite’s findings that the best time to post, on average, is at 10am on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. But it also depends on the social media channel—because on each one, your posts might perform best at slightly different times. 

Plus, it’s important to keep in mind what types of schedules your particular audience has, based on typical schedules in their industry. For example, educators might be online much earlier than 10am—as early as 6am before they begin teaching classes—whereas audiences in 9-to-5 industries might be online more frequently during their commutes or mid-day lunch breaks. 

Again, your website analytics should arm you with all the information you need. Remember to find out which time zone your audience is in so you can schedule posts according to their clock, not yours. You’ll also be able to work out what times of day your highest performing content was posted, so you can identify the average optimum time to reach your audience. 

Sharing website content on social media

In addition to gaining followers and fans, the aim of social media is to drive traffic to your website, where people can engage fully with your brand and buy your products and services. So it’s a great idea to share your website’s content on social media. 

Examples of website content to share on social media include:

• Excerpts from blog posts, reposted in LinkedIn articles, so people can click through to your website to read the whole text

• Clickable links to pages in your Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn feeds

• Featured images from your website on Pinterest

Squarespace allows you to share website content quickly and easily via its built-in share buttons, although you could also opt to automate your sharing via a third-party scheduling tool.

One of the best ways to make sure you’re posting the right website content to the right social media at the right time is to create a content calendar. It should include posts that relate to important times of year and celebrations (e.g., International Women’s Day), as well as posts that reflect your brand’s activities, such as product launches and recruitment drives. 

A robust content calendar gives you a view of everything you intend to post over a given period so that you have plenty of time to prepare your content for publication.

Read more about how to build your presence on social media.