The social media space is getting competitive with more and more brands trying to tap into the social audience for their business promotions. While the social space is huge, it too isn’t infinite. Every brand needs to understand the various social media networks, trends, and audience requirements etc. to make the most out of social media.
Social is very different from search where there is almost no option for evergreen posts that brings in passive traffic. One needs to take every day in social media marketing as a new challenge and work hard to keep the social traffic busy and flowing.
Here, we are going to discuss several social media tips to get the most out of the social space.
1. Be Consistent: Social media isn’t a onetime effort. Most social networks are heavy feeders where posting several updates a day is a normal thing. However, whatever posting consistency you choose, you need to keep it going. The bottom line is that your social media feed should never run dry. Keep enough posts scheduled so that you don’t have to worry for weeks or even months in the future.
2. Make a content plan: Social media content is very different from normal blog content. Here, you need to create specific content for the micro blogging platforms, catchy images for image first social networks, your old content has to be socialized and you need to share other people’s content as well.
A good social media content plan needs to include a lot of things, keep promotional content to a bare minimum and provide more value in a eye catching way.
3. Optimize older posts for social: If you are blogging for a very long time, chances are that your older posts aren’t as optimized for social media. Update those posts; add catchy images of various sizes that are compatible with the popular social media sites. Adding social media snippets, tweetables and shareables are helpful because most people who want to share your content, won’t do it unless you make it easy enough for them to share the content.
4. Post more valuable content: On social media, when you create content specifically for the socials, it works even better. Look for your older posts, find relevant images and videos and form them into shorts, stories and status updates and then share them on the various social media sites. If the content is valuable, actionable and has real world usage, it will be received well on the social media.
5. Ask Questions: Let your users interact with your social media updates. Post picture and videos asking your audience for answers and feedback. Run some polls and ask your followers to take part in it. The more your followers get involved with your content, the greater reach it will achieve.
6. Keep an eye out for trending topics: Something or the other keeps trending on the social media. The key here is to look for topics that are relevant to your niche, or at least those topics that you can tweak and include in your content. Whenever you find something relevant, try to incorporate it into your content while posting.
7. Use relevant hashtags: Hashtags are important across all networks. If you include relevant hashtags in your updates, the entire social update goes to the content stream of that hashtag. Anyone checking that hashtag will be able to see your content, that way you will be able to catch some new and highly relevant users.
8. Respond and Connect: When you as a content creator respond to comments, you build a very strong connection with your audience. Most people value your time and response on the social media, which is the reason why they are commenting in the first place. This connection or bond that you have with your audience goes to a whole new level when you start responding to the comments and questions on the social media.
9. Learn from your competition: If you are wondering what kind of social media content might be helpful for the niche and space that you are in then the best place to find it out is the timelines of your competitors. Whatever they are doing, if it is working for them then it will work for you. However, blindly copying does not help, one needs too research and find out what type of content works best and create more of it.
10. Prioritize one Social Network: Most of the bigger social networks are always useful no matter what niche you are in. However, every niche has a much targeted social network and that is where you should put all your focus. Utilize all the social networks that your time and resources allow and focus all your extra energy on the one network which works best.
11. Keep social profiles updated: With time, plenty of things change and new things becomes a priority. Your social media profiles should be updated to show that change. That way, everything stays relevant and your social media marketing is focused on the correct direction.
12. Host Giveaways: Contests and giveaways are one of the most useful methods to grow your followers. This is also a way to keep your followers engaged and reward your loyal users. If your audience feels that you value them then they will, in-turn reward you with more content shares, likes and tweets.
13. Network with targeted influencers: If you browse your timeline or even search for something or look up hashtags and trending topics, you will see that plenty of posts are shared by people who have a huge following. This is because most social networks consider them as an influencer and shows more content from their profiles.
No matter how much you try, you will still find that those influencers are able to trend their content far easily than you can. But this isn’t bad as you can network with these influencers and once in a while, manage to get your content shared by them.
Social media marketing is all about staying fresh, catchy and consistent. If you are able to bring value on a regular basis, social media will work for you.