Never underestimate the potential of social media to transform your business. A recent study found that over half of all customers use social media to research their purchases.
How you perform on social media plays an increasingly central role in your sales, profit, and future.
With that in mind, where should you start when you want to use social media effectively? Well, we’ve put together this guide to help you answer that question.
Power social media marketing is all down to producing unique and shareable content. Here, we’ll explain how to improve each social media post and maximize your efforts across every social media platform.
Not everyone loves the same content on social media. For example, some people enjoy seeing a funny meme on their feed. In contrast, other social media users might prefer in-depth, thoughtful articles.
Many will head to their favorite platform for a dose of inspiration to start their day.
To improve your business on social media, start by examining your target audience. The best way to get your audience to pay attention to what you post is to understand who they are and what they love.
There are several ways to do this. You could try some manual detective work. Head to your biggest fans’ pages and profiles, find out who else they follow on social media, and see if you can spot a pattern.
What posts do they like and share? On which posts have they added comments?
If that sounds too time-consuming, use analytics instead. Find out the demographics of your followers. And study the data on the content you’ve already posted to see what got the most engagement.
Most small business owners start their social media marketing by manually growing their accounts, uploading content, and engaging with fans.
You might have realized that there comes a time when you must automate some of that work using a social media scheduler.
But there’s another good reason for moving to a professional and automated social media platform. It will improve the share-ability of your content.
At SMBHub, our social media platform will help you find the best time to post and allow you to post across multiple platforms. That gives you better results in a fraction of the time.
Plus, our ready-to-go content means you can always keep your feed fresh with relevant and high-quality visuals. That will help to keep your most loyal followers engaged.
You have a split second to grab followers’ attention on social media. Users scroll through content at rapid speed.
With that said, consider whether you need to improve your visuals to make them pop. Perhaps some input from a graphics designer will help you create something more visually unique and appealing.
If you don’t have the budget, test different designs with your audience to determine the style that receives the best reaction. Try various color schemes, fonts, and images.
Don’t forget about other ways to make your graphics more interesting. Infographics, for example, are fantastic (especially on LinkedIn) because they look great and are highly informative.
People also love to share good infographics, so it’s your opportunity as a business to get your content in front of a wider audience.
Don’t forget to include embed code for your infographics to allow people to easily add a linkable version to another webpage (that helps your SEO efforts too).
Here’s a staggering fact for you. In 2022, video content will make up around 83% of all internet traffic. If you’re stuck for business social media post ideas, why not use video?
The best way to try video is to go for a short video experiment such as an Instagram Reel, as these are only a minute long. It’s low production and will help you fine-tune the sort of content that works well with your audience.
Consider, too, how a video will help you with your high-level social media strategy. Aligning video to your strategy will help you concentrate on producing top-quality, highly shareable content.
Do you want to use video to spread the word about your brand? Will you use it as part of a marketing promotion such as a competition? Do you want to try videos to share a behind-the-scenes look at how your business operates?
These are all examples of pertinent questions to ask when planning your social content for businesses. If you are clear about your purpose when publishing a video, you’ll have a more successful marketing strategy.
When you have exceptionally high-quality shareable social media content, it’s tempting to assume that people will naturally want to repost it to their Facebook friends or Twitter followers.
In reality, that’s not the case. As the old saying goes: “if you don’t ask, you don’t get.”
Even the best content can quickly disappear on social media because people are busy and distracted. Sharing your content (however great it is) isn’t high on their list of priorities.
To get your content shared, you must explicitly tell your readers that you want them to share it! You can do this without it sounding too overly promotional or false.
When writing the caption or within a video, take a moment to request a follow or a share. Say something like: “if you loved this video, we’d appreciate it if you’d take a second to click the like button below.”
Adding a branded look-and-feel to your visual content is helpful for two reasons.
First, when your content is shared, it will be evident where it came from, without relying on small print or an easy-to-miss link.
Secondly, followers will instantly recognize your content when scrolling through their social media feed. It will increase the social media shares you achieve.
And as we mentioned earlier, you have less than a second to grab people’s attention. If they enjoy your content, they are more likely to stop and browse it when they recognize your signature brand.
Branding is more than adding your logo to your social media content. Decide on a color scheme, font type, and even the tone of voice you use. With videos, you might want to use a standard branded intro.
Outside of social media, people will find your content on your website and share it on their feed. But you need to make this easy and visual to maximize the shares you receive.
First, add big, well-presented shareable buttons to your website. If you use WordPress, try one of these recommended plugins:
Don’t forget to add sharing buttons to other elements of your blog post too. Short, catchy quotes are perfect for a “Click to Tweet” widget. And a Pin-In button next to infographics will get your visuals shared on Pinterest.
Finally, add a counter to your blog posts showing the number of shares that content has received. People are more likely to share content already proven popular with peers.
Producing original content for our website and social media is a given. But you can take originality one step further to make your content even more shareable.
That’s by producing source data. By that, we are talking about things like industry research, an original quote, or even an original dance move to trend on Instagram!
The more unique your content, the more chance you have of making waves in a crowded space where a vast proportion of content is an imitation of something else.
It gives others the chance to reference you more frequently in their content, which will help boost your shares.
Take industry research, for example.
Suppose you have done a study and have an exciting and surprising statistic to share. In that case, you might find your study cited on top blog posts, and it might even make it onto news websites too.
Social media audiences have become increasingly cynical as corporate brands jump onto a trending hashtag or movement. Authenticity can’t be faked. And authenticity is the currency of social media.
Create content that is emotional, heartfelt, and most importantly, genuine. Those principles will inspire and engage your audience more than anything else you publish.
Instead of focusing on what is trendy, think about who you are as a company. What causes do you support? What matters to your business?
For example, suppose you insist on using organic material for all the products you sell.
Can you use that principle to talk to your audience about why organic is important? Can you turn it into a cause from where you can speak earnestly and passionately on your social media platforms?
That’s how you truly engage an audience and get your content shared: by displaying passion and authenticity.
Social media might be a fun time-killer in our personal lives. But in business, it’s a valuable asset.
When you improve the quality and shareability of your social post, you are one step closer to a social media presence that works hard for your company.
Take the first step now by investing in a professional tool that will help you maximize the impact of each social media post. Take advantage of our free trial to see how The SMBHub can help you improve your social media marketing.
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