You’ve probably heard it a dozen times before, but social media needs to be part of your online strategy. Whether you have a website, personal blog or webshop, social media allows you to reach and connect with your audience. To get new people into contact with you and to stay top of mind with your current customer base or followers. But where to start? In this post, we’ll show you 10 examples of different social media posts to help you get inspired and reach your audience in a way that fits your brand!

Examples of great social media posts

1. The Cheesecake Factory: Use humor and great photos

The Cheesecake Factory is an American chain of restaurants, localized around the world. If you’re not familiar with it, you may recognize the name from the hit series The Big Bang Theory. They have a large following on Facebook and regularly post about food that’s on their menu. These posts get a lot of engagement, due to the great images used and the funny text accompanying them.

A picture of bread that gets more than 2300 likes and 243 comments, pretty impressive right? Of course, it helps that The Cheesecake Factory is a well-known chain of restaurants, with locations around the world. But what this example shows us is that a restaurant can do very well on social media by using nothing more than humor and quality pictures. Which keeps the audience entertained and attracts them to the restaurant by showing what’s on the menu.

2. Google: Share interesting customer stories

Google Maps is one of those things that doesn’t need much explaining. Most people know what it does, it helps you get from A to B. It can even find you a faster route when there’s loads of traffic up ahead. But a few days back, Google shared an interesting customer story on Twitter. Apparently, marine biologist Johnny Gaskell and a team of researchers, use Google Maps to explore ocean life. You know, way down there. Something that would have taken a lot more time if they haven’t had access to Maps. Quite a unique customer story and a cool way to look at a service that has become so normal in our day-to-day life.

What this Tweet shows us, is that user stories bring a product or service to life. It doesn’t have to be the most unique story in the world. If you show customers using your product or service and tell their story, others will be able relate to them. This doesn’t just give them insight into what your product or service can do for them, it also works as social proof. Because if other people are using it, and they’re happy about it, then people are more inclined to start using it too.

3. Tony’s Chocolonely: Show people what’s happening

Tony Chocolonely is a Dutch company that sells chocolate. Their chocolate bars are quite popular and their mission is to make chocolate 100% slave-free. As they are opinionated, which fits their mission, they often get a lot of engagement on their social posts. A year ago they opened a Chocolate Bar in Amsterdam and announced this news on LinkedIn:

As you can see this post has a lot of likes and comments. And what works well is that they have a photo of the Chocolate Bar accompanying their announcement. This shows people what they can expect and what the ‘store’ looks like. This is a great example of something you can easily do for your business. Share fun photos of what your place looks like, share photos of new products that just came in, or share any other visual updates to get people excited about visiting you.

4. The Clay Creative Co: Increase followers with giveaways

Now, this is an online store you’ve probably not heard of, as it’s a small business from the UK that sells its earrings through Etsy. But this post on Instagram is a great example of how a small online business can grow its number of followers. By doing a simple giveaway! This online store (and Instagram account) is run by one person, who also makes these earrings herself. And to celebrate that her account now has 1000 followers she decided to do another giveaway. Mind you, this may be a smaller business, but her Instagram account is only four months old and she already had 500 followers after the first month.

If you’ve ever been active on social media, chances are that you’ve seen one or more of these posts before. They’re a great way to get people to share your content, commenting on it and introducing your business to their friends. You can even ask your audience to comment with why they believe they should win or why they love your product so much. Giving you valuable input into how your product is being used and perceived by your audience. Do make sure to check out the rules when it comes to these giveaways contests, as you want to make sure you’re doing it properly.

5. Social Media Examiner: Share your expertise

Social Media Examiner is a media company that’s based in the United States. It publishes online magazines, blogs and podcasts about how business people can use social networks. They share interesting news on their Twitter account on a regular basis and have more than 500,000 followers there. The reason that they have so much content to share is that there’s a large community of experts that creates content for Social Media Examiner. Like this blog on social media marketing strategy that they shared a while back.

Don’t worry, we realize that it’s highly exceptional to have access to lots of content creators. But what we can learn from this post is that sharing content gets you fans. By giving away some of your expertise for free in posts like this one, people will be more inclined to follow you online and remember your brand. It may feel a bit contradictory, but by helping people do some stuff by themselves they will come to you when they need more help. Because they will trust your expertise on a topic. So invest time in content marketing and introduce people to the team of experts you have, whatever field you’re in. What’s also great about these kinds of posts, is that they get retweeted or shared by others more often.

6. LEGO: Involve your fans and let them get creative

LEGO has lots of fans around the globe. And a product that people can easily get creative with. For Pride Month they asked people to create something that reflects pride. From all of the pictures they received, they chose a few highlights to share with everyone on Facebook. Which got them quite some likes and positive feedback in the comments.

What this type of post shows us, is that you can involve customers or followers in your content creation. Not only will the people involved love seeing their creations online, but it’s also genuine and original content. Which can increase customer loyalty. LEGO also does a lot around Pride Month and by showcasing their support, they get a lot of positive feedback from their following.

7. IKEA: Share your values and ambitions

IKEA is a Scandanavian furniture chain with stores around the world. They are, in their own words, taking ambitious steps towards a more sustainable future. One of their LinkedIn posts that performed well was about their goal to serve a 50% plant-based menu by 2025. Which is interesting, as it has little to do with their main product (furniture and home accessories). But it makes sense when you think about it. You can find a restaurant in almost every IKEA store and they also sell food products that people can take home. And sustainability is becoming a serious factor in people’s considerations to buy somewhere. This post shows us that a lot of IKEA followers respond well to this focus on sustainability.

What we can learn from this post is that the price or quality of your product isn’t the only thing that people care about. Of course, it’s important to tell people about that as well. But don’t be afraid to share news on your ambitions, your companies values and what you care about. People want to know who they’re buying from and whether this company fits their own values and ambitions. Especially when you’re just starting out, sharing your story and where you want to go can get people interested in your brand. Don’t shy away from a personal touch in your social posts if it fits your brand.

8. OREO: Ask questions that are easy and fun to answer

We’re assuming you’re familiar with OREO, but if you’re not: it’s an American brand that mainly sells cookies. Although they’re mostly known for their classic Oreo cookie, they also offer other flavors. In a recent Instagram Story they asked their fans to choose their favorite flavor.

What’s good about this type of story is that they’re easy to interact with for people that are viewing the story. They only need to tap their screen once and they directly get to see the results so far. It’s fun to see and it gives you valuable information about your audience. Plus, this kind of Instagram Story, in which you ask a question, is relatively easy to make.

9. Bettys: Be proud of your exposure

Bettys is a local tearoom with a few locations in Yorkshire, an area in northern England. They’re quite famous around these parts and Bettys has been around for more than 100 years. A few weeks back, they shared a post on Facebook with a link to a video on the BBC website. In this video, Nadiya and Fred (who you can often see on the BBC) visit and eat at Bettys. As you can see, got a lot of likes and comments.

Part of the success of this post can probably be explained by the fact that these are two very familiar faces for most of Bettys followers (that are UK-based). But it’s also interesting to see in the comments is that people loved seeing Bettys featured in this video. You can feel that these followers are really happy for the tearoom and the exposure it’s getting. What we’re trying to say is that you should share your successes. If a local paper writes about you, or when someone tags you in their social post, write about it. Or respond to it. These kinds of feel good posts are a great break from more serious content and can get you lots of likes.

10. HP: And be proud of your team

Your business wouldn’t be anywhere without its people. And with so much happening online nowadays, customers love seeing the faces behind a website. Or service or product. HP is one of the companies that seem to pay a lot of attention to their employees. For one, they post about their goals when it comes to inclusiveness and diversity. But they also show their employees as individuals, like in this LinkedIn post.

So, what does this last example of our 10 social media posts tell us? These types of posts make your business more personal. They give your audience an idea of the team that’s involved and what their story is. This increases their trust in your brand and it will probably make you more likeable. Especially LinkedIn is a great platform for these kinds of posts, as this is also the platform you can use to find new people to join your team. Having happy employees talk about their job and employer will also help increase your number of applicants.

A quick recap

In this post, we looked at ten examples of social media posts. And gave you ten tips for your own social media sharing. Which is a lot. So let’s list the main takeaways from these examples:

• Don’t be afraid to get personal and share your story
• Showcase real people, like your customers and your team
• Interact with your audience in an easy way
• Share photos of your products and business in a fun way
• Giveaways and expert content help you reach new people

Share your content on social media

Most of the examples of social media posts we shared here are by bigger companies, that also have a bigger marketing budget. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t draw inspiration from them. Even if your company is a lot smaller. By sharing unique content on social that invites your audience to interact, you can use social media to get more customers and strengthen your relationship with them. So get out there and start sharing on social media!

Control what your content looks like with Yoast SEO

If you’re sharing a video or photograph without a link, you can do this directly. However, if you share a link to one of your pages and don’t set anything, your social post will probably not look that great. Yoast SEO can help you take control of that. With our plugin you can change the image, title and description that are being shown when sharing your page on social. Our Premium plugin even comes with social previews that show you what your content looks like when it’s shared on Twitter and Facebook.

With our latest release of Yoast SEO 16.5, we’ve added another feature: the Social Appearance Templates. With this feature, you can set a default social template for every page or custom post type you have. Like the social previews, you have control over the images, titles and descriptions. This way, you can make sure that your pages always look good when being shared on social media, even when they’re shared by someone else! If you’re a user of our free plugin, you won’t be able to use these templates. You can, however, set a default fallback image that will be used when any URL on your website is shared.

Read more: Social media optimization with Yoast SEO »

10 examples of social media posts to get inspired – Yoast.