Using Social Media to Scale Impact: What Content on Which Platforms

What content format and which platform is most useful for mission-driven organizations to scale impact?

This is a question that many content creators and marketers are asking themselves as the rise of mixed media has flooded social media and beyond. Social media is a way to expand your audience reach and become a thought leader who can make an exponential change in your industry or country.

We know that content is king, but which type of content is best for getting YOUR specific message across?

Well first, nail down the answers to these two questions:

Who is your target audience?
What mediums and platforms are they using?

Instead of seeking to lure your intended audience to the platform or medium you prefer, you need to meet them where they already are.

If you are trying to reach investors, consider this: 75% of investors now use social media to inform investment decisions, specifically LinkedIn. If you are trying to reach government officials or journalists, Twitter is a good place to start. Seeking humanitarians? Try LinkedIn. If you’re trying to reach development professionals, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are your go-to’s.

Maybe your targets aren’t organizationally specific, but country-specific.

According to a guide created by ICRC, OCHA, and IFRC, We Are Social releases annual reports on mobile phone, internet, and social media use in many countries and for all regions of the world. You can also just google “Most popular social media in [name of country]”. In addition, some of the media landscapes from BBC Media Action, the European Journalism Centre, and the CDAC Network can help you understand how people are accessing information.

One thing we know (evidenced by research) is that video content is a medium that performs and delivers across all platforms. Video attracts two to three times as many unique monthly visitors compared to other content forms (source). Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined. In 2022, on Facebook, videos get as much as 135% more organic reach, 6 times more retweets on Twitter, and 75% of executives say they watch world-related videos each day on LinkedIn.

But what other content formats besides video can be of use on each platform?

If your audience is on LinkedIn, it might be useful to create:

Blog posts
Third-party content
Text (optimal post length for LinkedIn is 1,200-1,600 characters)
Photography and illustrations

If your target audience mainly uses Twitter, you might want to consider:

Images
Text (under 100 characters) with a link
List-based or how-to content
Quotes or questions

On Facebook, here are some high-performing content types:

Questions
Photos
Giveaways
Links

Curious about content length & timing? Check out this article by Hootsuite for some insights.

The above tips are simply a launching pad to get you started on your content and social media strategy, but at the end of the day, your audience is unique and you will need to dig deep into testing to see what works best. Track the engagement of each content type on each platform and optimize your strategy based on that data. Yes, it is time-consuming, but it is worth it if your content traffic leads to conversion.

Want to cut out the data & testing middleman? Don’t be afraid to interview the people you are trying to influence on what platforms and content formats they prefer using and consuming from! Either way, if content is king, then the intentionality behind that content is queen.

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