Give Reasons to Follow

When posting content to social media it has to serve a purpose.  Three common purposes include:

Engage
Think about how your content will engage users. Is it something interesting? This could be anything from a menu, a price list or information on particular services.

Represent
Does the content represent your business or product? This could be a photo of the interior to attract customers, if it's something customers would visit.

Offer
Does the content offer something to users that isn't normally available? This could be a discount, special offer or even something useful such as extended opening times.

While it may seem like common sense to publish content following these guidelines, many businesses tend to fall into the trap of posting the same content frequently. An independent coffee roaster may post photos of freshly roasted coffee beans which look great, but if that's all they're posting it gets very samey, repetitive and people won't care after a while. It's important to offer up variety while staying on-brand.

Include photos of the premises, the packaging, staff working there to represent the business.

Publish information on where the beans come from. What's involved in the roasting process and why your process makes the beans taste so good to engage users with your business.

Let users know where they can purchase your coffee beans. Do you sell direct from the warehouse? What are you opening times? Offer them information that could help them make a buying decision.

Work these different types of posts into your social media schedule to ensure a variety and constant message to your audience to help engage and offer something to your users while representing your business.

Remember, it's not about chasing likes and publishing content that will get you large quantities of likes. It's about posting content that will engage, represent and offer your users a reason to follow you on social media. Posting funny content to get a laugh serves a one-time purpose only. Users will scroll on through their feed and immediately forget who you are and what you do.