November 1, 2014
By Maria Minsker, contributing writer

How to Create the Right Content for the Right Social Channel

photos shared. This makes selecting the right type of content particularly important—while brands can get away with occasional professional, campaign-related images on their Facebook feeds, campaigning is a strict no-no on Instagram.

"Sharing real-life casual moments of your business makes your company appear more personal to viewers, and more personal means more relatable, [which ultimately means] a better brand connection. Instagram allows for companies to give better insight into [their] employees' lives, the company culture, how their products are made, or why their service is superior," Stewart says. Instagram is best suited for exclusive content, behind-the-scenes photos, and anything that shows the truly personal side of a company.

On the content distribution side, no network compares to Facebook. As a relationship management tool, Facebook gives marketers the ability to reach audiences in ways that most other networks can't, thanks to its ever-growing list of features and functionalities including fan pages, group pages, apps, chat, polls, links, photos, and, most recently, video. Simply put, more site functions allow marketers to develop better relationships with customers through various means of interaction and content distribution.

Facebook also has "by far the most comprehensive and powerful advertising capabilities, compared to any other social network, and perhaps even Google," Jordan Enright-Schulz, product marketing manager for Adobe Social, says. The advertising is highly targeted and accurate, and if a brand is looking to do what Enright-Schulz calls "straightforward, direct response advertising," there's no tool better than Facebook.

Still, other networks are catching up. Though LinkedIn can be classified as a content creation tool, its content distribution capabilities are expanding rapidly. In July, the company acquired business-marketing vendor Bizo to become the go-to tool for social B2B marketing. Specific plans are still unclear, but LinkedIn's overall intention is to become "the most effective online platform for marketers to engage with professionals," according to a company statement.

Twitter can be used as a content distribution tool as well. In fact, an overwhelming majority of tweets shared by brands include links to photos, articles, videos, and other types of branded content. "Seldom do you see a tweet that doesn't direct consumers to the e-commerce site, the company blog, or another relevant content hub," Marco Hansell, CEO of TwtMob, a company that connects brands with social influencers, says, "but there's much more to Twitter than that."

Experts agree that Twitter can offer brands a level of real-time engagement that no other marketing channel can come close to delivering. While Facebook is all about creating opportunities for brands to be discovered by consumers, Twitter users are typically looking for real-time, bite-sized pieces of information, Nikhil Sethi, CEO and cofounder of Adaptly, a social marketing technology provider, says.

Twitter is better suited for content that surrounds a specific piece of news or pertains to an event. "Everyone's always talking about that tweet that Oreo sent out during the blackout at the Super Bowl—the one that said 'You can still dunk in the dark,' and pictured a cookie and a glass of milk against a black background. It's the perfect example of how Twitter works. Relevancy in real time makes a brand feel connected and human," Sethi says.

And Twitter makes it easier to have one-to-one interactions as well. On Facebook, most interactions take place in the comments section, but on Twitter, brands can tweet at a specific user and take the discussion away from the original post to address individual concerns more effectively. Facebook's privacy restrictions and "friending" policies make these more personal interactions more difficult.

Because Twitter plays such a major role in facilitating real-time conversations between customers and brands, it's also an important tool

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