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Whether you’re managing your own social media accounts or those of a brand, it's important to ensure that you have a clear plan to optimise your social presence.
Without further ado, here are DO Digital’s Eight Easy Tips to improve your social media presence:
1. Identify your objectives
Devote solid time to unpacking the brand’s objectives for being on social media. Are you trying to drive traffic to a website? Creating brand awareness? Pushing sales? Educating the consumer? Highlighting the heritage of the brand?
2. Draft content pillars
You likely have quite a few objectives. These can be translated into content pillars that form the building blocks of your social content. Each month you need to create content that speaks to each content pillar at least once – perhaps more depending on the importance of the pillar.
3. Build Platform-Relevant Calls to Action
Think carefully about how your objectives translate to the various social platforms. Facebook is a great space to drive awareness around an event, whereas Instagram is less event-friendly. Twitter is great for news and PR updates, whereas Instagram is ideal for showcasing visual products.
Peruse through the various calls-to-action (CTA’s) that each platform permits. If you know you want to drive traffic to a website, then you’ll want to include “Learn More” CTA buttons on Facebook and Instagram. If you want customer feedback, you might want to use the polling function on Twitter or Instagram Stories.
4. Be human
Once you’ve posted your content, people will respond, comment and react. You’ll need to manage your social community by replying to comments, queries and complaints. Try not to be devoid of personality. A brand has a personality too, and you need to spend time understanding how the brand would speak if it were human. This will help endear your online community to you, and they’ll be more likely to trust a brand that speaks with a consistent voice.
5. Analyse this
Some of your posts will do very well, and some… not so much. But the general popularity of a post in terms of likes may be misleading. Using each platforms’ insights or analytics tools will help you delve deeper into the performance of your posts. For instance, you may have a post that didn’t receive many likes or comments, but tons of people hit the sign-up CTA button – which was your objective all along.
Furthermore, you may have loads of engagement, but from the wrong crowd. Insights and analytics reveal the demographic make-up of the people engaging with your content. Are these the same people who are the brand’s intended target market? If not, you may need to rethink your content.
6. Read the room
You’ll be surprised at the massive followings certain Instagrammers, Facebookers or Twitterheads have amassed! Find out who these influencers are in your category and tag them in relevant posts. Get them on your side… but be subtle about it. You want them to be genuinely interested in your content so that they comment and share, serving your content to their massive followings.
7. Icons, icons everywhere
Ensure that your website and email signature feature social media icons that click through to your various social accounts. People don’t want to have to track you down, so make it easy for them.
8. Keywords are king
People don’t only search for words and phrases on Google, they use social media as search engines too. Compounding this, social media posts that include keywords show up in Google searches. Think about what your target users might be looking up on Google that would bring them to your content. Include those keywords and phrases in your content.
Who knows, thinking about those search phrases might even inspire you to create some truly valuable content!
Ready to become a social media rockstar?
Try out these tips and see if you find greater confidence at producing a dynamic social media presence. If you’re still feeling that you need to sharpen your pencil to really be a social media rockstar, take a look at Introduction to Social Marketing course.
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