Remember the day when social media just meant MySpace or Facebook? Yeah, we don’t either. Today there are so many different social media platforms that it can be hard to know which ones to use and confusing to deploy the best practices of each. Here are three easy-to-follow tips that can apply to all of your social media accounts.
1. Good Content – I know you have heard this one but stay with me for a second. Everyone has talked about how content is king, but what I think a lot of people leave out is that some of the best content describes what your company specializes in, such as new or existing products, services and events.
I call this localized content. Reposting or sharing articles are great ways to show your followers that you are current with what is going on, however, letting your followers know you will be at the local parade this summer helps feature your community involvement.
Posting pictures of your company’s parade float and volunteers can highlight content that is meant to be more light-hearted. It also showcases the human side of your brand. Other great localized content can be from your website or about a specific product or service. Sharing information about your services and products helps raise awareness of what you do.
2. Customizing your content for the network – Sharing the same information across multiple social media platforms is a good idea and can be helpful to reach all of your followers regardless of their preferred network. Visuals are a must on most, but tweaking your content so it better fits the social network helps display the content in the best way possible.
If the content is different on each network a user that follows multiple social media accounts will see complementary information. An example would be to post pictures from a recent photoshoot of a product; the post to Twitter could be a teaser, the post to Facebook could be an album or a few pictures and the post on Instagram could be either a behind the scene shots or the brainstorm session that brought about the idea of the photoshoot or project.
3. Use descriptive keywords or hashtags. – Social networks are a great way to reach new customers and followers. Most have built in search engines that scour the content to bring relevant results to users. Pinterest and Google have both added a search feature that scans your posts for keywords.
Using the right keyword to describe your content will help draw more people to your accounts and will help your post reach more users overall. However, air on the side of caution as far as adding every hashtag or keyword under the sun. Similar to SEO you want your posts, including keywords and hashtags, to seem natural and make sense for a person to read.
As mentioned, these are only a few tips on how to reach and engage more people on social media. We have additional resources available in other areas of our blog. Do you have a social media success story? We would love to hear it below in the comments section.
