How to Create Content for Social Media: A Simple 6-Step Guide

You want to start creating content on social media, but you don’t know where to begin. This guide will help you draft an action plan!

Feb 19, 2025 - 12:40

How to Create Content for Social Media: A Simple 6-Step Guide

Creating content on social media can be powerful, both for businesses and aspiring creators — but it can be tough to figure out where to begin.

You’re hemming and hawing over which social media platforms you should be on, which content creation tools you should use, and building a social media content strategy. It’s all too…overwhelming. Where do you even start?

As it happens, right here.

We've created this guide to be a one-stop shop: your action plan to start, scale, and maintain your social media content creation.

Content formats and the social platforms that support it

Before we get down to business, you must know which social media network supports what content formats. There are broadly four types of social media content:

Text posts are simply written content on social media. You can type your social media content and hit publish. Here’s an example:

Image posts are single images or carousels (a collection of image posts in a single social media post). These can be graphics, testimonials, selfies, photo dumps, etc. Here’s an example:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Buffer (@buffer)

Video posts are Short-form videos or long-form videos depending on their length. Here’s an example:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Buffer (@buffer)

Most social media channels contain multiple types of content formats. You can mix and match them to get the best reach and engagement. Here’s a quick table showing what content formats are available on the major platforms:

Social media network	Text posts	Image posts	Video posts
Instagram	❌	✅	✅
TikTok	✅	✅	✅
YouTube*	✅	✅	✅
X (formerly Twitter)	✅	✅	✅
LinkedIn	✅	✅	✅
Pinterest	❌	✅	✅
Facebook	✅	✅	✅
Threads	✅	✅	✅
Bluesky	✅	✅	✅
Mastodon	✅	✅	✅