Social Media – Tips to Make or “Brake” it
How do you view social media? Some view it with fear and loathing whereas others relish in the challenge of sparking engagement and the joy of getting a like or share. Regardless of which side of the post you’re on, social media is essential to every business and every individual. Take note: according to Pew Research, more than 75% of adults in the USA are active daily on social media. Essential evil, perhaps, but its importance as a brand awareness and communication tool is indisputable. Not to mention that social media managers are one of the fastest growing and hottest careers.
Here, we present some tips to make or “brake” your social media efforts.
A few best practices
By now, we all understand that value and impact that the right hashtag can have. You can claim some white space for your brand across social channels by using it regularly. Or you can become part of a community that is evolving around that hashtag. Both are effective – and essential – efforts on social media. Speaking of hashtags and communities, the narrower that you make your reach, the more likely that you’ll be to forge a deeper connection and increased level of engagement. By swinging too broadly across a wide population, prospective customers will be left unclear how they fit within your brand. That said, you don’t want to go too narrow with your audience reach or you run the risk of having nobody to engage with. Think about it the way that Goldilocks would: too much one way or the other way may be a problem but “just enough” is the balance that you want to aim for.
Relatively new features like Call Buttons on Facebook ads overcome the potential for “leakage” when visitors get directed to your landing page but arrive there without any other call to action clearly delineated. The Call Button can direct ad clickers directly to your shop to buy what they see. Other approaches, like scheduling your social posts, can be liberating and save you oodles of time. Doing so takes planning but it’s well worth the peace of mind (and few minutes you get back in your day).
Directing your outreach based on life events (for example, someone posts that they are pregnant, engaged or moving and so on) can trigger businesses in those respective niche fields to target their offering to a captive audience. Email flows programmed to celebrate customers’ birthdays, one-year anniversaries of buying something from you and other milestones are another simple but effective way to expand your e-Communication and interaction on social media.
#1: scope the competition
Right out of the gate, some of you may be thinking, “I don’t have their budget or an army of social media people. I can’t compete.” Fair enough, but you can certainly learn from them and what they’re doing. As one Silicon Valley CEO was known to say, “Sometimes, it’s better to be Pepsi and follow versus be Coke and to have to set the path.” If your competitors are running ads, you can mimic them or, at least learn from them to see which keywords they’re attracting visitors with.
#2: avoid anything “cute”
No, we don’t mean avoid cute and cuddly baby animals – those always suck in a few pairs of eyeballs. We mean cute in terms of jargon. For example, if you’re in the field of human resources (HR) and you’re advertising your services, call it what it is: use established terms like HR, talent acquisition and so on. There are numerous examples out there of brands who have bit it trying to be too cute using alternative and “fun” terms like “people magnets” and “office czars.” It’s that kind of jargon that buries brands and leaves people scratching their heads asking WTF?
#3: create a social cadence
Yes, you need a plan. For all those of you who thought you’d finally found a field and a career where you can just wing it day-to-day, think again! If you’re going to post three days per week, or whatever the cadence is that you’ve opted for, you can streamline your efforts with the following planful approach. If you’re going to post every Monday, and you want your theme to be Monday Motivation, stick with that every week and create your Monday Motivation template: use it weekly. Do this for every day that you plan to do a post and be consistent, creating a template for each. Your theme doesn’t have to be an established weekday theme like #MondayMotivation or #WednesdayWisdom, feel free to create your own. That said, take note: alliteration tends to do well when it comes to theme-based posting.
#4: stick to traffic ads
If your Facebook pixel, which is more-or-less the digital signature of your brand in the context of the behavioral and demographic characteristics of those who have shown interest in your offers, is less than 1,000 points, conversion ads are going to be less effective. Stick to traffic ads for now to continue to train the pixel with insights based on the profiles of those who click over to your website. That way, you can later mimic those profiles and keep extending your reach to those who are less than 1-5% different (95-99% alike) of your website visitors.
#5 quality over quantity
Over the last year or two, trends have shifted. Where brands were once faced with the overwhelming requirement that they post daily or even two to three times daily, including weekends, times have changed. Consumers, deluged by posts, started disengaging. Today’s consumer is highly savvy and is more likely to engage with you if you post a few high quality posts each week versus a slew of shoddy posts all day long, day in, day out.
Of course, we all know that rich visuals are the key to attracting eyeballs. The more stunning your images are, the more compelling they are and the more likely that people scrolling through their social feeds will stop long enough to actually look at what you posted. Ask us, we know – we’ve got more than 1 million available to our members who use our professional presentation, infographics, data visualization templates and more.
Keep the faith – social media works!