A social media post is the type of content you see regularly on your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feed. Whenever you or your friends publish something new, it's a post. On Facebook, a post can be plain text, an image, a video, a carousel, a poll, a gif, and more! On Instagram, your posts must include a visual, be it an image, video, carousel, etc. Twitter is similar to Facebook in that you can post many types of tweets, but Twitter is the only platform to limit the number of characters (letters, spaces, symbols, etc.) per post. 

     Part of our job as a digital marketing agency is to create posts for clients and our own business. We always use visuals because they're more eye-catching and more likely to get people's attention. Creating a social media post is a multi-step process. Firstly, we have to build the creative - the actual design/visual aspect. We overlay text, create complex designs, and work our magic. We build creative with the next step in mind; the copy. Copy is the text that accompanies the visual that gives information. It's also known as the text or the caption outside of the social media marketing world. If we're posting to Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter, we always make sure to include relevant hashtags (#) to help more people find our posts on the platform. 

How Is a Social Media Post Delivered To The Public?



Social media posts reach audiences organically. Posts are not backed by money, they are not pushed in front of people, and they are not given priority on a feed or timeline. Organic reach is dependent on the followers you already have, as well as their interactions with the post and the hashtags you've associated with it. If you have 1,000 followers, your potential reach is already at 1,000 people. If any of those followers share your post or tag their friends in it, your content will now be shown to people outside of your followers, but still without money behind it. If you utilize relevant and popular hashtags, people who follow or explore those hashtags could stumble upon your post organically as well. The second you put any money behind a post, it becomes an ad, which we will get to very shortly. To make a long story short: Create the post's visual and textual aspects -> publish the post to your platform of choice -> followers will see your post and can share it to an even bigger audience.

As we said, both posts and ads have text and a visual. They both will show up on people's feeds and timelines, but they do so differently. In order to run a social media ad, you need to create an advertising account and set up payment options. Ads only run when there's money behind them. After that, you need to set up your campaign goal. Do you want people to like your Facebook page? Are you trying to get more visitors to your website? Maybe you want to increase sales. Choose the goal that is best for you and the platform will optimize the ad's performance around it. Next, your digital marketing agency will have to create a target audience. This should be composed of the type of people you think will be most interested in your business. For example, if you sell makeup, you'll probably want to focus on women with a secondary focus on performers, drag queens, etc. This is the major point of differentiation between posts and ads.

     While social media posts reach your followers and people who stumble upon you, social media ads will be sent out onto the feeds of people who have never heard nor actively searched for you. You can target based on location, age, gender, and interests so that your ad appears on the feeds of potential customers. Once the ad is running, the platform of choice will plop it onto timelines or feeds of accounts that fit in your targeted audience. Ads will typically look similar to a post, but they will say "sponsored" and usually have more details and are clickable. Your digital marketing agency will keep tabs on how your ads are performing and will make adjustments to the images, text, and targeting to try to get you the lowest cost per action. A well-optimized social media ad can cost just a few cents to get someone to complete your desired goal!