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The Anatomy of a Social Media Post: 9 Things You Should Include

By Victoria Lee
July 23, 2024

Before creating a social media post, it’s important to understand its purpose. Are you going to inform, entertain, or promote a service to your audience? Having a clear goal will help you create the best and most effective social media post.   

This article will help you make the most of social media’s potential. However, this requires an attentive and deliberate approach throughout your entire process—from the headline you write to the visual content you share and how you interact with your followers.

We’ll cover the key components of social media posts but first, why are they so important?

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Importance of Social Media Posts

In the age of hyper-connectivity via technology, there are more than 5 billion active social media users worldwide. 

The right social media post strategy ensures people look at and engage with your posts across all platforms.

Understanding your target audience is not just important; it’s mandatory. Your business will experience a boost in growth, and you’ll see an excellent return on your investment (ROI) from your social media post efforts.

Regularly posting on social media can help identify the interests of your target audience (which type of posts they engage with) and increase your reach (great for boosting brand awareness).

Components of a Social Media Post

When your B2B company publishes content on social media platforms, you’re trying to attract your audience’s attention.

Amid the numerous pieces of content online, making your post distinctive and getting it to stand out is crucial.

Being creative is essential to success. There are a few key components of social media posts, which must be included, regardless of the platform you’re using:

Content Creation

If you’re just starting with social media marketing, the first thing to do is create content. All marketing strategies need high-quality content.

If you have a thoughtfully evaluated and creative content creation strategy, you can complete brand lead generation and increase engagement and retention goals. You only require a simple-to-follow content checklist based on best practices to create content. 

Visual Content

Social media has changed significantly since its beginning. While text-based content remains powerful in B2B marketing, social media posts that include visuals, such as innovative graphics, pictures of people, and short-form videos, have an advantage.

Posts with visuals have a higher chance of receiving more shares, comments, and clicks than just text-based posts. For instance, blog posts could include the article’s title within the image so that people scrolling can see the headline.

Compelling visuals of high-quality grab users’ interest quickly and convey your B2B brand’s image.

Engagement Tools

Comments, shares, and clicks increase a post’s reach. When writing a social media post, keep engagement in mind. Use simple language and use a tone that encourages cooperation.

To increase post engagement, you can use hashtags with trending topics. You can also offer special offers, contests, and giveaways to increase engagement.

Companies should be aware that social networks are a dual-channel medium. Posts should begin conversations and promote engagement with the audience.

Timing and Frequency

If you post on social media platforms and feel like you’re not getting enough attention, take a look at the frequency and timing of your posts.

Posting when your followers aren’t active means it’s likely your posts won’t receive the attention they ought to.

The frequency of your posts also plays a significant role in organic engagement. The more frequently you post, the more people can see your content in their feeds/timelines – but you could be removed from their feeds if you post too frequently so make sure you get the balance right.

How to Create the Anatomy of Social Media Post

Here is a step-by-step guide on how you can create the best social media post.


1. Attention Grabbing Headlines

The amount of traffic to your post will vary based on the quality of the headline. If you don’t create a compelling and engaging headline, every other marketing process you use won’t matter as people won’t click on your post. It is one of the most important parts of a social media post because it tells people what to expect and grabs their attention –  it’s the first part of your post that users see. 

Here’s an example of a LinkedIn post written by 100 Pound Social’s expert Content Team. The compelling headline quickly sums up the post purpose:

(Source)

Importance of Capturing Attention Immediately

It’s been reported that the average human’s attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish!

While this statistic is disputed by many, the fact is that you’re going to have little time to grab a person’s attention.

Knowing how to create a compelling headline is crucial. It’s your chance to get the attention of your followers.

In just seconds, people decide whether the quality of your content is worth their time. They do not bother to read or scan all your content. They scan the headlines first.

Famous advertisement director David Ogilvy believed that your headlines are seen five times more than the copy you write:

On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.”

“It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.”

A grabbing headline draws the audience’s attention and encourages them to read further.

Tips To Create Headlines

Did you know that 59 percent of individuals share content without reading it first? 

Make sure your headlines interest those who are likely to forward the content to others. Provide a compelling reason to take the time to read, click, and, most importantly, share your content. 

Some of the things you can incorporate in your headlines include:

  • Tips
  • Principles
  • Ideas
  • Lessons
  • Tricks
  • Strategies
  • Ideas
  • Ways
  • Facts
  • Secrets
  • Reasons

Here are a few examples:

👉 9 Tips on How To Write a Blog Summary Like a Pro

👉 7 Rules for Designing a Landing Page 2024

👉 18 Facts About B2B Content Marketing That You Didn’t Know 

👉 8 Writing Tips to Make Your Content Engaging

Use Interesting Adjectives in Your Headlines

Adjectives can be used to create emotional writing. They also keep readers engaged and intrigued.

Using adjectives will enhance your headline and make it more appealing to your readers.

Best-selling writer Jeff Goins suggests adding these adjectives to your headline:

  1. Fun
  2. Free
  3. Painstaking
  4. Incredible
  5. Strange
  6. Effortless
  7. Essential
  8. Absolute
  9. And much more

2. Captivating Captions

You can choose between a short headline, a more lengthy caption, or both. A caption is the best for adding additional information about your content in a short space.

Your caption text must grab the attention of your reader. Make sure you keep the right balance between being simple and engaging. Effective captions can be any of these things:

  • Include numbers, like percentages, for example, “top 11 social media post designing ideas.’’
  • Create a sense of urgency, such as being ahead of the game
  • Ask a question
  • Intrigue  curiosity

Brainstorm several caption ideas and try them before publishing. Be sure to know how your graphics and caption will appear on each social platform before you plan to publish and develop optimised variations.

For the best outcome and excellent engagement, use headlines or captions of 10 to 20 words (or between 138 and 150 characters). 

3. Quotes

If your post contains external content with an inspiring or compelling quotation, include it in the main body to encourage the reader to continue reading. You can even design the quote as a graphic. 

Quotes can be extremely effective from a professional, famous, or industry leader.

Visual Content

Social media is primarily visual, and visually oriented-content is crucial for increasing engagement. Visual posts always receive more shares, clicks, and comments than those using text only.

(Source)

To increase the impact and appeal of your content, try using an assortment of images with text overlays or videos. There is no need to add visual elements to every post, but you should note how images impact engagement and adapt your strategies accordingly.

In visual content, you can add videos, GIFS and images.

4. Best Practices for Eye-Catching Visuals

  • To ensure a competent appearance and avoid technical problems, ensure your videos and images meet the specifications of the social networks you’re publishing them to. 
  • You can overlay your headline over the top of your photo for more exposure and to draw attention.
  • Check your videos and images using mobile phones to ensure that your images are clear and correctly oriented.
  • If you employ your photographers and designers, use custom artwork instead of stock photos, which are often generic and do not represent your B2B company’s image. If you have no resources, check unsplash.
  • If you use images with text, make the text short and simple to understand. Be sure to include important text to make your captions more accessible. 
  • A few visual elements that draw viewers’ attention are faces and people, Sharp, vibrant images, high contrast, and video.To ensure a competent appearance and avoid technical problems, ensure your videos and images meet the specifications of the social networks you’re publishing them to. 

Engagement Tools

Getting engagement on social media through content is quite difficult, but you can implement a few methods to ensure maximum engagement.

5. Hashtags

(Source)

Hashtags are phrases or words joined together and preceded with the symbol #. 

They can be used to find content that includes brands, themes, trends, and campaigns. They’re instantly accessible on social networks once you post them, so they can make your content searchable and help you integrate your B2B brand’s name into hot topics, especially on LinkedIn.

Hashtags can be clicked. 

When you click a hashtag or perform a hashtag search within a platform, you are presented with a list of the posts that use the hashtag.

Here are a few of the most popular types of hashtags:

Hashtag TypesExample
Daily#FridayWork, #MondayStart
Service#Socialmediamanagement
Location#London
Niche#Saas
Event#Expo2024
Acronym#YOLO
Social Responsibility#Greenworld
Sale#NewYearoff
Industry#B2BCommunity

6. Tagging & Mentions

(Source)

Mentioning other people in your social media posts is an extremely effective tip. It’s part networking, marketing, and a way to show thanks. 

Mentioning or “tagging” someone is simple and crucial on social media, so you’ve probably already used it countless times.

Social media mentions are an essential element of collaborative content marketing. They also draw the attention of potential clients.

If you tag anybody on social media, they’ll get a notification and can share your blog post with a single click.

It’s advisable to highlight active people on that social network who are likely to engage in the content.

7. Emojis

(Source)

Emojis are a fun way to communicate online. Emojis provide individual touches to online interactions, from various smiley faces to hearts and thumbs-ups. 

Although emojis may not be for everyone and are unsuitable for every B2B company, they can enhance your brand’s image. Your B2B brand has a distinct tone and voice, so your emojis should reflect these. 

If, for instance, your brand is known for fun, then emojis such as the smiley face or heart eyes face are appropriate. 

However, when your company has a more well-qualified tone, you may want to choose more neutral emojis such as the thumbs-up or check mark. 

When you are creating the social media content calendar or the month’s emails, go through the emojis available and make a list of usable and non-useful ones. Emojis can define the tone of your content. 

For example, if you email a customer to express gratitude for your business, you can employ the smiley face emoji to express your appreciation. 

👉Use emojis that match your brand. Always keep your B2B brand’s voice consistent.

👉Be sure to know the significance behind your selected emojis and ensure you are using them correctly. A mistake could cause embarrassment for your B2B brand or even worse. Look at Emojipedia for the complete list of emojis and their definitions.

👉Be inclusive. You’ve got a wide selection of emojis available, and you should use a variety to reflect the entire audience. Variations include skin tone, couple types, and families.

👉Make the designs simple. Different operating systems have distinct Emoji designs. Though they’re all built on identical Unicode specifications, their look may differ between platforms, which can be confusing.

Timing and Frequency

“How often do you post on social media?” “How often should small businesses post on social media?” and “What are the best times to post on social media?” are valid concerns for B2B companies.

This is because small businesses usually don’t have the time, resources and funds to compete with the optimal posting frequency for social media algorithms, especially the Linkedin algorithm.

8. Timing

Timing is about knowing when your target audience wants to hear from you. Your posts are most effective when the right information is presented at the right time. 

For more information on when to post on each social media platform and how to refine your timing strategy, read Best Times to Post on Social Media in 2024.

Once you know the best times to post, you can then create your content calendar to schedule your posts. 

9. Frequency

Frequency refers to how often your audience would like to hear from you.

As a general rule of thumb, you should post to each social media platform at least three times per week, ensuring each post is high quality.

Remember, posting infrequently can lead to disengagement and risk reducing your credibility. 

Plan your posts in your social media content calendar and prioritise quality.

Final Thoughts

Creating the perfect social media posts requires time and consistency. However, understanding the structure of posts on social media across different platforms will allow you to get attention as a growing B2B brand or business.

The more often you publish engaging content across all social media platforms, the quicker you’ll notice revenue growth. 

Use these strategies as your guides and you’ll soon make a mark on your chosen audience.

Next Steps

100 Pound Social is a UK-based business with a deep understanding of the market dynamics and trends that affect your company’s social media marketing.

Since 2017, we’ve helped 1,000+ small businesses like yours by providing expert social media posts, blog, and newsletter content.

We work B2B companies across a range of professional service industries, including Consulting, Finance, Tech Services, Marketing, Professional Training, SaaS, Recruitment, & Software.

Join a 15-minute demo to find out how 100 Pound Social can help your business grow online – from just £100 a month.

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