Social media is all about engaging your audience. If you’re not taking advantage of social media to help build your brand, you may be missing out on a cost effective marketing tool. What exactly is engaging your social media audiences? Its building followers and getting likes, comments, shares, retweets and clicks to your posted links. It’s opening up a two-way conversation with your customers. Relevance is extremely important in engaging and interacting with your social media fans. If you scroll down your social media feed on any given day, you are inundated with information. You want to stand out from the noise with interesting content that your followers will find relevant and useful. A social media content creation specialist can help you build the content you need build relationships and stand out get noticed.
3 Tips for an effective social media strategy
1. Choose the social media platform that best fits your audience and your goals
Is your goal brand awareness, lead generation or engagement? There are many social media platforms from which to choose. It’s best to choose just two or three to focus on. A social media agency can help you determine the best platform for your goals. Consider which is best for your business and brand? Facebook is by far the most widely used social media network. According to SocialMediatoday, https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/top-social-network-demographics-2017-infographic Facebook has 1.9 billion unique monthly users. 75% of users spend twenty minutes or more on the site each day, and it’s the best place to reach millennials as well as gen x. It’s the smart choice for almost any brand looking to expand its reach.
If you’re targeting a younger audience, then you may want to incorporate Instagram into your social media mix. Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform. 90% of Instagram users are under 35. Looking to engage primarily with women, then consider Pinterest. This social media platform has predominately female users across a wide range of ages, from 18 to 64.
2. Be consistent with social media posting
If you want to build and keep a following for your brand on social media, you must post consistently. Work with a social media marketing company to build a monthly social media plan. You can plan in advance and pre-schedule postings for two or three platforms. It is not a one size fits all plan for all social media platforms. Posting frequency depends on the platform. For Facebook, you should post a minimum of three times per week, but no more than one social media post per day. According to research from Hubspot, Facebook pages with over 10,000 followers were the only ones for whom posting more increased the number of clicks per post. For businesses with less than 10,000 Facebook followers, the more often they posted, the fewer clicks per post they received. Brands that posted just 1 to 5 times per month saw an increase in engagement. For Twitter and Instagram, you can increase your frequency. Shoot for one or two Instagram posts a day. The life of a tweet is only about 18 minutes, so tweet as much as you want. Just remember, across all social media platforms, consistency is key.
3. Capture attention on social media with photos, graphics and videos
Posts with photos or engaging graphics or video have a much higher engagement rate than text-only social media posts. Hubspot said that Facebook posts with images see 2 times more engagement than those without images. Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images. It’s important to incorporate eye-catching photos and other graphics into your social media marketing calendar.
Social media opens lines of communication between businesses and consumers
Social media is a convenient channel for consumers to engage with a brand. It’s important to monitor all of your social media channels and respond quickly to comments and questions. This will encourage even more interaction and help connect you on a human level. Most importantly, this open line of communication with your followers will enable you to show your brand’s personality and authenticity.
When posting to social media, strive to provide value to your followers and encourage conversations. Use the rule of thirds when creating content. One third of your content promoting your business, products and services, one third sharing news and educational content and one third of a more engaging nature. Highlight employee activities or accomplishments, promote community and non-profit events and post various photos that relate to your business. Following this rule will help you build loyal fans.
Contact a social media marketing company today
Poor social media planning can lead to ineffective marketing and missed opportunities. The social media consultants at Corcoran Communications can work with you to build a social media plan to meet your goals. We can also help with social media advertising. You can view a list of our social media services online at link to social media page. Want to learn more? We’d love to hear from you. Call us at 570-472-0365 or email ruth@corcoranpr.com.