Social media has confused many businesses and organizations over the past few years. Most get that they have to provide meaty, relevant content, but too many are not using proven engagement strategies that could significantly raise the success level of organically hitting a wider audience.
Discover the 5-key things you should be doing within your social media posts:
1) ENGAGEMENT AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY
Engagement (not numbers/views) is the #1 goal on Social Media.
Without engagement, you are yelling into a vacuum. Features do not create engagement, so be sure that you are using “relevant benefits” and focused on the perspective/viewpoint of the audience.
This life-changing video — regarding how you operate in your marketing world — takes 17-minutes out of your day to view “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” by New York Times® Best Selling Author of ‘The Power of Why’, Simon Sinek
2) KEEP POSTING, POSTING, POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA
This is a key component in your overall strategy. The frequency makes people always see something new, and that means it is “fresh” in the eyes of a like-minded spirit.
“When it comes to posting on Facebook and LinkedIn, remember that you may only have between two and five posts per week that will get distribution by the networks’ news feeds. With that in mind, focus on the quality of each post (and the content preferences of your audience), and aim to get more likes, comments, and shares as your metrics of success to build up your audience and to make the news feed algorithms work for you. And when it comes to Twitter, post freely — the timeline updates so frequently that you’re at an advantage posting more often to reach more people.” ~ Daria Marmer at Hubspot
3) PROVOKE, RESPOND, AND THEN RESPOND AGAIN
Research shows that to boost your engagement and response rate, keep your posts between 50 and 125 words. Response rates declined slowly, from 50% for 125-word messages, to about 44% for 500-word messages. After that, it stayed flat until about 2,000 words. This applies to email marketing too.
4) SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT ABOUT THE PITCH
Stay away from the pitches of ideology. Use your content-real-estate to connect with the audience, rather than just sharing what you find interesting.
With the advent of the influencer and the often paid promotion of “lifestyles” via social media, one would think that people would be accepting of sales pitches infiltrating their social media feed, however, that’s just not the case.
Your social media strategy should be about influencing and speaking to the people that already believe what you believe — your CTA should be about them sharing for themselves, not for you. It is this type of social media strategy that is what gets the most shares and engagement, grows your audience and potentially goes viral.
5) MEASURE, ANALYZE, AND ADJUST
All social media platforms have analytics. You should be watching those numbers and using the data to fine-tune your approach as defined in your strategy.
Adjustments along the way are common, if not crucial. We have a distinct advantage — more than any other time in history — to see exactly how our organic and paid marketing is doing. Incremental changes over time can make a big difference!
Don’t get too caught up in the numbers. I say this as there is so much data, that it is easy to get hung up in the marshlands of analytics. 80% action; 20% analytics is how I operate!
LASTLY, DISCOVER HOW CORTEX MARKETING CAN HELP
Did you know that there are several facets of social media management? Get a free assessment of your social media strategy and which management plan may be right for you!