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A Twitter account, no matter how active, just won’t cut it anymore. Then again, not every company can afford to hire someone dedicated to the activity levels and multiple accounts needed to generate engagement and sales across a broad social media strategy. While it seems like everyone now needs a “social media strategist” on hand, it’s important to know how to navigate the minimum demands of today’s digital landscape for yourself.
We’ve compiled a few tips and tricks to help you maximize your social media content — even if you’re working with limited time and resources.
1. Know your audience
Brands should have an in-depth understanding of their consumer demographics. While age, gender and ethnicity are all important factors, learning about your audience’s interests, mind-sets and behaviors will help you better understand how to craft your online message and connect with them. That means paying attention to their accounts, not just expecting them to follow yours.
Effective social media management also means knowing where your target group is to be found. You certainly don’t have to keep every social network updated if it’s beyond your resources. Instead, take the time to discover the outlets that will provide the most value to your company. For example, you might catch younger eyes with Instagram than you will with Facebook. Focus your energy on the audience that makes the most sense for your business.
2. Be valuable.
Think about content that will be meaningful to your target audience. Whether the content you post is informative, funny or technical, it must, above all, be valuable to your audience. You should think of your brand’s social media page as a source of important or appealing information for users – a place where they can interact with you and one another, where they can like and comment and, most importantly, share with others in their own networks.
3. Embrace hashtags.
Hashtags can be created by users or companies to support specific campaigns. It helps people follow the conversation about you (and once they’re interested, you want to hold that interest as long as possible, and make it easy for them to pursue it). Companies with a large following should look at coming up with clever and specific hashtags as a way to create traction around their brand — and don’t hesitate to promote and adopt one that other consumers already enjoy.
4. Get visual.
“A picture says 1,000 words,” said online reputation management expert and CEO of JW Maxx Solutions, Walter Halicki. “But a great picture can get you 1,000 likes. Great pictures have the tendency to go viral very quickly.”
Nothing engages a user more than a picture in the world of social media. Pictures are easy to look at, they’re easy to share and they can be interpreted on a personal level. Try incorporating visuals such as pictures, cartoons, videos and info graphics into your social media content.
(Speaking of which: Mad 4 Marketing has just added images to our blog as part of our new website redesign! What do you think?)