Chamber Creative Collective: The Posting Process
Date Published
Welcome back to the fourth Chamber Creative Collective, a blog series giving you practical tips to help with your posting on socials process!
This series focuses on easy, practical ways to feel more confident posting on social media, creating assets and putting your business out there.
So far, we’ve covered how we create graphics on Canva, how we produce Reels through CapCut and tips for taking better photos. In this post, we’re focusing on the actual posting process.
Starting the Posting Process
We know that starting to post can feel intimidating. It can seem like everything needs to be perfect, go viral or include exactly the right hashtags.
But the most important part is simple: just start.
We generally suggest aiming for three posts a week. For many of our business owners, we think this is a good starting point. It’s less than half of a post every day, but three posts a week keeps your messaging consistent without overwhelming your followers or yourself.
If you’re still getting into the habit of posting, focus on that first.
Have a clear graphic or video, keep your caption concise and focused on the message of that post, and clearly direct people to where they need to go. Emojis can be a fun way to add some visual interest, draw attention to important information and break up your caption. They’re also incredibly easy to implement. 🎉
Once you’ve gotten into a good rhythm, you can start experimenting with trends you might be able to participate in, hashtags, sharing your content to community pages, building your following and more.
But you don’t have to do everything at once.
What to Post
Something that goes hand-in-hand with not knowing where to start is the question: What do I actually post?
We know every business is different, but when we’re creating posts for our Members, there are a few themes that tend to work across industries.
Some examples include:
- Reviews and testimonials
- General company information
- Introducing the people behind the business
- The history of your business in the community
- Your products or services
- Behind-the-scenes content
Stumped on what to post? Try a “re-introducing myself” or staff post. Share a review you’ve already received on your Google Business Profile, or ask your customers for a new one. Have a new menu item? Tell people about it. Just finished a new product? Take a good photo and put it out there.
The important thing is, and we know this can be hard: don’t overthink it.
Everyone is at a different point in their business journey, and everyone is at a different point in their social media journey. Your customers and followers want to support you. They’ll be happy to see you putting your next post out there.
Captions
Since we’ve covered visuals in previous blog posts, let’s skip those and focus on the other half of the post: the caption.
Length & Structure
When I (Jenna) first started at the Chamber, I was writing long captions because I felt like I needed to make them more substantial for them to be valid.
They were too long even by five-years-ago standards, but especially now when people are scrolling quickly and competing content is everywhere.
Now, when writing our captions, I make a concerted effort to slim them down and focus on the most important information.
For events, I generally think about:
Who? Who is hosting the event?
What? What is the event?
When? When is it happening?
Where? Where is it happening?
Why? Why is it happening, especially for fundraisers or community initiatives
How? How can someone participate, register, buy tickets or learn more?
You don’t necessarily need every single one in every caption, but these questions are a great starting point when you’re staring at a blank screen wondering what to write.
Content
Not sure how you want to write your caption? This is a great time to use AI.
When I’m creating posts for Chamber events, I usually know exactly what I want to say, how I want it structured and how I want it to come across the first time we post about something.
The third, fourth or fifth time we post about the same event? Sometimes those caption ideas start to feel a little repetitive.
That’s when I use AI, specifically ChatGPT, to give me some creative spark.
I’ll give it the CliffsNotes version of what I want to include and ask it for a few options. Then I can look through what it suggests and make changes: make it shorter, funnier, more conversational, less formal, more energetic, etc.
Sometimes I’ll add my own wording. Sometimes I’ll go back and forth with it a few times. And sometimes, after enough editing, I’ll just use the caption it gives me.
The important part is that you’re still in control of the message.
AI can be a useful brainstorming partner when you need to bounce ideas off someone, but you happen to be sitting at your desk alone.
Posting on Meta Platforms
For this blog series, we’re focusing on posting to Meta platforms, Facebook and Instagram, because these are the platforms most of our local businesses will likely be using regularly.
Although Facebook and Instagram are owned by the same parent company, they aren’t identical. Content can perform differently on each platform, and it’s worth thinking about how you’re formatting your posts for each audience.
As a general rule:
Facebook tends to have an older audience, can accommodate longer captions well, has a strong community and sharing component, and is particularly useful when you want to direct people to a link.
Instagram tends to skew younger, is much more visually focused and generally works well with shorter, more conversational captions and engaging visual content.
These aren’t hard-and-fast rules. Your own audience may look completely different, which is why checking your analytics is always worthwhile.
Links
Let’s talk about links.
Facebook allows clickable links in posts, making it a great option when you’re selling tickets, promoting registrations, encouraging people to book a class or driving traffic to your website.
Instagram doesn’t allow clickable links in regular post captions, which is where you’ll often see the phrase “link in bio.”
Make sure that when you’re posting on Instagram, whatever you’re directing people toward is actually linked in your bio.
Instagram currently allows you to include up to five links in your profile, which gives most businesses and organizations plenty of room to direct followers to their most important destinations.
Another powerful tool on both platforms, but especially Instagram, is sharing links through Stories.
You can create dedicated Story graphics in Canva, but you can also simply share a post you’ve already made to your Instagram Story and add your link there. This gives the people watching your Stories another easy way to get where you want them to go.
Hashtags
And finally, hashtags.
Their usefulness can vary between platforms and types of content, so we don’t recommend treating hashtags as a magic ingredient that will suddenly make your post take off.
We don’t typically use hashtags on Facebook. On Instagram, we generally recommend keeping them limited and relevant, rather than filling the caption with a wall of hashtags.
A handful of relevant hashtags can be useful, particularly for discoverability around specific topics, locations or Reels, but focus on quality over quantity.
Just Start Posting
We hope this blog post has inspired you to post, or at least given you a little more direction for when you’re ready.
Remember: don’t overthink it.
Everyone makes spelling mistakes. Links sometimes don’t work. Specific information occasionally gets forgotten. For the most part, these things can be edited and updated.
You’re only human, and the important thing is that you tried and put yourself and your business out there.
Your next post doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be posted.
Have other social media questions? Email us at info@sgbchamber.ca and we can chat!