Last Updated on September 13, 2024
Social media is no longer just a bonus option for businesses that want to succeed. It’s a mandatory part of your outreach efforts, and often the most effective one. Social media gives you access to the target audience you want to reach and provides a great way to get feedback on any strategies or products since you get responses so quickly.
And importantly, social media is free, so you don’t need to invest plenty of resources into your efforts before seeing a return.
Ideally, you want to be using social media to refine your marketing strategies, expand your audience, and create referrals for website traffic. Below, find six tips that will make it easier to manage your social media accounts and make the most of your efforts.
1. Bring Unique Value
Everyone is on social media now, so the competition is stiff. You don’t want to just blend into the chorus of brands who are trying to get attention with mediocre, uninspired posts. Try to keep up with the current conversation that’s running around social media.
Use humor, especially quirky or somewhat subversive humor, that will resonate with your target audience– you want to sound like a person, not a company.
Ask yourself: what is our brand doing that makes us stand out from the others? What are we bringing to the conversation that no one else is offering?
2. Right Time, Right Frequency
There’s no single best time to post on social media, nor a perfect frequency. But paying close attention to any data you get from analytics will help you to garner insights. Don’t be afraid to repost content; then pay attention to how that same content does at different points in the day and different days of the week.
Identify which days and times get the most engagement, and establish them as key points in your schedule.
You may also find that thanks to the algorithms if you post more often your posts will be promoted and show up higher on feeds. You don’t want to overdo it and end up looking like you’re spamming the media feeds, but definitely make sure you post on certain platforms– such as Instagram– at least once a day in order to take advantage of the algorithm.
And don’t be too rigid: you can keep your eye on trending topics in your industry’s sphere and chime in if possible, even if it isn’t part of your regularly scheduled content. And on that note….
3. Use Tools
Don’t be afraid to get a little bit of help! A carpenter is no good without his tools; neither is a social media manager. It can be overwhelming to manually post dozens of time each day.
With a social media management tool, you’ll be able to schedule all your posts for the week without scrambling at the start of each day to get your material set up. They will save you time, but they can do much more than that.
Some tools will provide content suggestions designed to get you more shares and likes. Many will also provide hashtag and keyword monitoring to help you respond to relevant content, and identify high performing content to replicate its success. And if you are part of a whole social media management team, many tools will help you communicate via messaging services or approval systems for upcoming content.
4. Engage with Your Audience
You don’t want to just be dropping content onto the feed and otherwise staying silent. Remember to @mention the people you might be able to connect with. Your audience will rarely engage with your content on their own: there is so much entertainment out there that isn’t marketing.
That means you have to initiate it! Set up alerts for keywords and phrases that could present an opportunity, and participate in conversations. Personal interactions will increase your post reach and make others take note of what you’re saying.
5. Look at the Numbers
There are now a vast number of social media metrics available to managers. Keep an eye on post engagement and URL clicks, since you want to expand your following and create click-through traffic. You can see how many impressions you got, and sort them by organic vs promoted so you know whether you’re getting a good ROI for any promotion you pay for.
You’ll also, again, be able to see how your tweets do according to the day and the time.
6. Mix Up Your Content
On a basic level: posts with emojis will receive more attention. Tweets that contain pictures will also generate 150% more retweets. Video supposedly does much better on Facebook than regular text posts.
And the most successful images tend to be pictures of real people– whether that’s a photo of an employee at work, a selfie from a customer, or even just a meme with a real person in it.
On top of that, remember to mix up your tone and style. Some days might be for jokes. Others might be for practical advice about your industry.
Other times you may want to highlight a particular customer’s experience or give a little behind the scenes look at what your company has been working on. Try to maintain a consistent tone– it’ll feel more like there’s a real person behind the account– but don’ be afraid to mix up the actual type of material.
Using these six simple tricks will help you to use social media in ways that are more effective, saving you time and trouble while also building a larger audience. At the end of the day, one of the best things to keep in mind Is that you want to seem like a real person, not just a faceless business.
That may also mean reaching out to disgruntled customers and responding to help them fix any issues. Nothing seems more real than that!
