Small businesses to large conglomerates all have varying degrees of pain points with social media. Platforms evolve, user behavior changes, and the need for content continues to rise brands need to be smarter.
So what social media strategy and tactics should be taken to help support your business? We’ve compiled a list of just some of the things you can do now and during trade shows to keep your consumers engaged.
Planning: Content Ideation
Consumers don’t want to be just be seeing promotions from you. In fact most social networks have started to consider promotional content as spam if posted too frequently. This makes it increasingly difficult to get in front of the right audience when you post.
To avoid this your brand must master its voice and story. Provide context to the content you are putting out there and establish why your audience should care about it. Where did it come from? Why is this important?
Even though posts may not be promotion specific anything that has a story or meaning behind it has a higher likelihood for engagement, which in turn helps elevate content among social network algorithms making it easier for audiences outside your network to see it.
Content Calendar
Once you have content types defined a content calendar will help keep you organized and keep to a post cadence. Although a little more time consuming up front it will reduce time in the long run knowing what content you want to share and where it lives.
Content consistency is incredibly important when building your social network. This doesn’t mean you have to post every day, but creating a post cadence that viewers can expect to see will help sift through the clutter.
For tips on how to do this effectively check out this resource.
Identify the ideal social channels
Just because there are several social networks out there doesn’t mean you have to be on them. It’s better to create quality content for the right channel rather than trying to fit one thing across the board. Ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve on social media (ex. Increase brand awareness, drive sales, establish authority, etc.) and define what channel will be the best to help you achieve this.
To correctly identify the channels that may make the most sense for your business, here’s a handy cheat sheet to quickly determine what might be best for you.
Image/Video Sizing
This may seem like a no brainer but each social media channel has ideal sizing for photo and video content they prefer brands adhere to. Formatting visual content can help content rise to the top of news feeds and drive more engagement from viewers.
Click here to view the ideal sizes for each major network.
Now that planning is taken care of, here are a few tips and tricks for promoting content that supports your brand goals.
Take Advantage of Video
Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter all have strong support for video content. Video content gets higher engagement rates than anything else on these social networks and is the preferred content of viewers. Video does come with a few caveats though:
• 85% of video is viewed without sound. Make sure whatever you create isn’t entirely driven on the audio.
• Most content consumed is between 60-90 seconds. Short and sweet is always good to start but keep content tight and impactful.
• Stories for Facebook and Instgram help drive conversions. It makes it easier to embed links to other URL’s so you can drive traffic to web pages.
It’s also worth noting that video will perform better on each channel when uploaded directly to your page versus using an external link like YouTube or Vimeo. Native uploads receive 530% more engagement than 3rd
Source* https://www.toprankblog.com/2018/07/best-practices-social-media-visuals/
Mix Up Content
Posting about products 100% of the time is often viewed the same as promotional content, which will hurt your engagement and appearance on social networks. Keep your viewers engaged by creating different topics for your content and posting them accordingly. Examples of this include:
• Company culture posts
• News in your community/world
• Industry news
• Branded content/product specific
• Informative tips
Optimize Your Social Profiles
A detail that is often over looked, make sure your company information is filled out in your profile. The same thing holds true when setting up your social media accounts and keeping your brand handle and name consistent across channels. This provides consistency for your audience, makes it easier for your audience to find specific information about you, and helps boost your organic SEO outside of social networks.
So go through your social profiles across the networks you’re on and make sure the following are consistent:
- Username
- Profile and header photos
- Bios
- Company descriptions
- Links
Tag Appropriately
Whether it’s other profiles, locations, or hashtags, tagging content correctly can take content beyond your immediate audience. If using these tags correctly you can increase your viewership organically but you’ll need to be strategic about it.
• Tagging profiles – If there are people you’re working with to create the content don’t be afraid to tag them in your posts. This will allow your brand exposure to their audience and hopefully drive additional awareness around those audiences.
• Location based – People love seeing content in interesting places, and it’s been proven to crease engagement. Use the location tag to show your viewers where the content was created or it originated from. This doesn’t mean everything has to say it came from an office, but it could mean you had content that affects different parts of the world or a specific trade show.
• Hashtags – For some social networks hashtags are the best way to tap into previous/existing conversations and content. Do some research on hashtags that currently exist and align with the content you’re creating, then use them at your disposal to tap into other networks you may not have had exposure to.
These social media best practices should help make your posting more impactful for the viewers who crave content. Help support your brand by building connections across the social media channels to help expand your business.