Wondering which social media platforms make the most sense for promoting your business? Below are the four that we believe are the best places to start, along with distinguishing characteristics of each that will help you decide what, when, and where to post.
Typical content: Mostly images, but with Stories and IGTV, there are plenty of opportunities to post video. There are also plenty of text-only “images” being posted to feeds.
Post frequency: 1-2 times per day
Character limit: 2,200 characters, but text will be truncated beyond 125 characters.
Can you click on a post? You can’t link out to other pages in feed posts, but accounts with 10,000 followers or more have access to a “swipe up” function where a link can be added to a story.
The vibe: Of the four social media platforms we’re touching on in this blog post, Instagram is the most visual. And while the quality can range from account to account, Instagram feeds are typically aesthetically-driven, polished, and curated, so it’s especially popular with artists, makers, and photographers. When considering what to post on Instagram, it’s important to not only choose the best visual representations of the work you do, but to pay attention to how the posts appear in the grid under your bio. In addition to seeing your posts in their feed one at a time, customers—and new followers—will visit your profile and see all your images collected together. The top nine posts are usually visible without scrolling, so one way to approach what and when you post is to make sure your top nine are a good representation of what your business is all about so new followers can absorb this at a glance.
Typical content: Largely text-only posts, but you’ll also see a lot of images and videos.
Post frequency: 3-5 times per day.
Character limit: 280.
Can you click on a post? Yes.
The vibe: Whereas Instagram is driven by visuals, Twitter is driven by words. You can post videos and images, but most of the posts on Twitter revolve around sharing thoughts, whether that is simply stated in a text-only tweet, or in sharing an article or video. This makes it popular with writers, humorists, and journalists.
Typical content: A mix of images, videos, and text-only posts.
Post frequency: 1-3 times per day.
Character limit: 63,206, but whoa, that’s a lot! Text will be truncated beyond 125 characters.
Can you click on a post? Yes.
The vibe: Even though it came before both, Facebook is sort of a hybrid between Instagram and Twitter in a lot of ways. From text-only posts to video, it’s great for posting a wide variety of content to a relatively diverse audience. And pretty much anything you’d post to Instagram would be appropriate to post on Facebook, plus a couple more things: articles and other text-heavy resources that don’t have a particularly compelling visual element, as well as text-only posts.
Typical content: Industry-related articles and videos.
Post frequency: 5-10 times per month (but more is fine, too!)
Character limit: 1,300 characters, but text will truncate beyond 140.
Can you click on a post? Yes.
The vibe: Think of LinkedIn as the networking event of the social media platforms. Put your professional foot forward here, and find strategic ways to toot your own horn. Share links to your work and accomplishments that show your skill, industry news and information to position yourself as an expert in your field, professional opportunities in your company, and more.
Takeaway
In the end, you know your business the best, so choose which platforms you’re most excited to get started on, whether that’s just one or all four. And know that there are definitely exceptions to many of the “norms” we’ve described. So please feel free to simply use this guide as a jumping off point—where you go from there is up to you!
