Social media has become an integral part of our lives nowadays. It is increasingly becoming rare to meet someone who is not on some social media platform or the other. There are now more than 2 billion active social media users worldwide, and this number is expected to continue growing rapidly each year.
Businesses are looking at ways to leverage social media more effectively, considering that social media generates a huge amount of data in real-time. Every day, there are over 500 million Tweets, 4.5 billion likes on Facebook, and 95 million photos and videos uploaded on Instagram. Organizations are now looking at ways to tap this huge potential through their social media marketing activities. But how best can one use this medium most effectively?
1: Use visual elements: The human brain is designed to capture visuals and pictures more effectively as compared to text. Try to use pictures or videos in your social media messaging. Tweets with images, photos on Facebook, and images on LinkedIn get more engagement. The three newest social platforms are based entirely on images – Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat.
2: Use catchy headlines: Your content is great but is it grabbing your audience’s attention? Create better or new titles for your content. You can use the same content across different platforms with new titles. This will ensure that there is consistency in what you are saying across different networks at the same time you are exploring diverse platforms.
3: Engage with your audience: Rather than simply disseminating information on to your audience talk to them. Ask them thought-provoking questions or you could even do a poll and ask for their participation. You could start a conversation or ask for feedback on your newest product or services. Let them know that you’re listening and that you value their feedback. Always strive to create a human connection with your social media users and try to show them the human side of your business.
4: Post Native Video content: Post content that your audience can access directly and not through some link that may take them to some other page. Native video is any video that is uploaded directly on to a social media platform which then auto-plays with the news feed. It is most popular on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
5: Leverage conversations across all social media channels: For companies to build more connections with their audience a good idea is to use conversations across all social media channels. For instance, a poll on twitter can lead to a Facebook update or create a video. This further can lead up to a blog post.
6: Customize content according to the platform: While sharing content one must always remember that customizing the post to suit that particular platform will generate maximum hits. Every company is competing to grab the audience’s attention. The one that stands out will be the one that can tailor their content according to the platform. You can maximize the chance of your content being read by posting it several times on social media with multiple headlines and multiple visuals. As social media users don’t see most of your social media posts on any given day anyway, consider posting multiple times to social media as a way to ensure your audience has a chance to see your content.
7: Share at the right time: Timing plays an important role. The content that you create has to reach the maximum people to have the maximum impact. Try to share the content when most of your audience will be online and active. Also, keep in mind that different social media channels have different peak times.
8: Leverage Social communities and Internal employees: There are already zillions of communities in social media platforms that you can utilize to promote your content. Linkedin alone has more than 2 million communities. Joining and becoming an engaging member of appropriate communities allows you to promote your content to a very targeted audience. You could also be innovative and engage your own employees to share your content. Studies suggest that content shared by employees gets eight times more engagement than content shared by brands.
9: Consolidate online communities by# hashtags: Hashtags can pull together various online content as the same hashtag can be used across various platforms. This allows for cross-pollination of your message under the same marketing or brand campaign. They can promote and build communities of loyal brand advocates.
10: Embed social media content into your company blog post: A great way to ensure that your customers have a holistic view of your social media strategy is that you embed your social posts into your company blog posts. This will ensure that the topics that your blog posts cover are topical and close to your customers’ heart.
To stand out from the crowd in the social media space, understand people for who they are, and focus less on their money. The people who connect with you may not still be your customers but they are definitely your prospects. There are zillions of businesses that have an online presence and try to lure prospects but savvy customers look beyond this and look for companies that focus on them as individuals.
