Social media engagement is crucial to building your online following.  There are many strategies to accomplish that goal.  Today, though, I want to focus on the 4 types of visual social media posts you can create and the tools you can use to create them.

First, though, let’s check out these visual social media post statistics:

Facebook – One million hours of video are viewed every day on Facebook.

Instagram – More than 91% of posts on Instagram are photos.

Twitter – Posts with images are 150 times more likely to be retweeted than plain text.

LinkedIn – Posts with images garner 200% more engagement than text-only posts.

What are the 4 Types of Visual Social Media Posts? Whether you are posting a graphic, gif, video or slideshow, there are 4 types of posts you can create.  All are appropriate for business posts.

Informational – Sharing information about subjects that interest your audience is a great way to engage your followers.  This is where knowing your target market becomes crucial to your success.  Popular events, school updates, local government decisions all serve as informational items of interest.  As a Realtor®, you can share the latest real estate information that is of interest to homeowners, buyers, and sellers.

Educational – Post information that educates your target audience.  In real estate, this could include topics relative to first-time home buyers, tax incentives for homeowners or what’s involved in home inspections.  Create an “explainer” video and post it on social media.

Entertaining – Every post doesn’t have to be matter-of-fact.  Take time to show your personality in an entertaining way.  Post photos and videos of events, funny sayings, etc.  The Lighter Side of Real Estate is a great place to find humorous real estate graphics and tweets to share on social media.

Inspirational – Who doesn’t need a little lift in their day?  Inspirational quotes get likes, hearts, shares, and retweets.  Combine that inspirational quote with a great photo and you have a shareable winner.

Now that you know the type of social media posts you want to create, here are best free tools to create them.

Canva – Canva provides access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts.The tools can be used for both web and print media design and graphics.

Pablo – Pablo is similar to Canva.  Create wonderful graphics with compelling text for more engagement  Lots of predesigned templates and photos.

Crello – Crello is another great resource for graphic design with pre-made and pre-sized templates and graphics.

To create a video, check out Practical ECommerce’s, “11 Online Video Creation Tools for Small Business Use”.

Get a list of other business tools here.

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